■< 
 
 
 /->, 
 
fcvT- 
 
 <r z ~ 
 
 DUKE * 
 
 • 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 LIBRARY 
 
 Treasure %oom 
 
 THE 
 COLERIDGE 
 COLLECTION 
 
 /- 
 
 > 
 
 1 
 
 TV 
 
 ^ 
 
o, 
 

Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2012 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 http://archive.org/details/onconstitutionof03cole 
 
ON THE CONSTITUTION 
 
 THE CHURCH AND STATE, 
 
 ACCORDING TO 
 
 THE IDEA OF EACH 
 
 AIDS TOWARD A RIGHT JUDGMENT 
 
 ON THE I.ATE 
 
 CATHOLIC BILL. 
 
 BY S. T. COLERIDGE, ESQ., R.A., R. S. L. 
 
 LONDON: 
 HURST, CHANCE, AND CO. 
 
 1830. 
 
PRINTED BY BRADBUItY AND DENT. 
 

 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 The occasion of this pamphlet will be sufficiently 
 explained, by an extract from a letter to a friend : — 
 " You express your wonder that I, who have so often 
 avowed my dislike to the introduction even of the 
 word, Religion, in any special sense, in Parliament, 
 or from the mouth of Lawyer or Statesman, speaking 
 as such ; who have so earnestly contended, that 
 Religion cannot take on itself the character of Law, 
 without ipso facto ceasing to be Religion, and that 
 Law could neither recognise the obligations of Re- 
 ligion for its principles, nor become the pretended 
 Guardian and Protector of the Faith, without 
 degenerating into inquisitorial tyranny — that I, who 
 have avowed my belief, that if Sir Matthew Hale's 
 doctrine, that the Bible was a part of the Law of 
 
 283848 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 the Land, had been uttered by a Puritan Divine 
 instead of a Puritan Judge, it would have been 
 quoted at this day, as a specimen of puritanical 
 nonsense and bigotry — you express your wonder, 
 that I, with all these heresies in my head, should 
 yet withstand the measure of Catholic Emancipation, 
 and join in opposing Sir Francis Burdett's intended 
 Bill, for the repeal of the disqualifying statutes ! 
 And you conclude by asking : but is this true ? 
 " My answer is : Here are two questions. To the 
 
 f first, viz., is it true that I am unfriendly to (what is 
 called) Catholic Emancipation ? I reply : No! the 
 contrary is the truth. There is no inconsistency, 
 however, in approving the thing, and yet having my 
 doubts respecting the manner ; in desiring the same 
 end, and yet scrupling the means proposed for its at- 
 tainment. When you are called in to a consultation, 
 you may perfectly agree with another physician, 
 respecting the existence of the malady „and the 
 expedience of its removal, and yet differ^ respecting 
 the medicines and the method of cure. To your 
 
 "** second question (viz., am I unfriendly to the present 
 measure ?) I shall return an answer no less 
 explicit. Why I cannot return as brief a one, 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 you will learn from the following pages, tran- 
 scribed, for the greater part, from a paper drawn up 
 by me some years ago, at the request of a gentleman 
 (that I have been permitted to call him my friend, 
 I place among the highest honors of my life), an old 
 and intimate friend of the late Mr. Canning's ; and 
 which paper, had it been finished before he left 
 England, it was his intention to have laid before the 
 late Lord Liverpool. 
 
 " From the period of the Union to the present hour, 
 I have neglected no opportunity of obtaining correct 
 information from books and from men, respecting the 
 facts that bear on the question, whether they regard 
 the existing state of things, or the causes and occasions 
 of it ; nor, during this time, has there been a single 
 speech of any note, on either side, delivered, or re- 
 ported as delivered, in either House of Parliament, 
 which I have not needfully and thoughtfully perused, 
 abstracting and noting down every argument that was 
 not already on the list, which, I need not say, has 
 for many years past few accessions to boast of. 
 Lastly, my conclusion I have subjected, year after 
 year, to a fresh revisal, conscious but of one influence 
 likely to warp my judgment, and this is the pain, I 
 
 283848 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 might with truth add, the humiliation, of differing 
 from men, whom I loved and revered, and whose 
 superior competence to judge right in this momentous 
 cause, I knew and delighted to know; and this 
 aggravated by the reflection, that in receding from 
 Burkes, Cannings, and Lansdownes, I did not move a 
 step nearer to the feelings and opinions of their 
 antagonists. With this exception, it is scarcely pos- 
 sible, I think, to conceive an individual less under the 
 influences of the ordinary disturbing forces of the 
 judgment, than your poor friend ; or from situation, 
 pursuits and habits of thinking, from age, state of 
 health and temperament, less likely to be drawn 
 out of his course by the under-currents of Hope, 
 or Fear, of expectation or wish. But least of all, 
 by predilection for any particular sect or party: 
 for wherever I look, in religion or in politics, I 
 seem to see a world of power and talent wasted 
 on the support of half-truths, too . often the most 
 mischievous, because least suspected of errors. This 
 may result from the spirit and habit of partizanship, 
 the supposed inseparable accompaniment of a free 
 state, which pervades all ranks, and is carried into 
 all subjects. But whatever may be its origin, one 
 
A D V E RTIS E M EN T. 
 
 consequence seems to be, that every man is. in a 
 bustle, and except under the sting of excited or 
 alarmed self-interest, scarce any one in earnest. 5 ' 
 
 I had written a third part under the title of 
 " What is to be done now?" consisting of illus- 
 trations from the History of the English and Scot- 
 tish Churches, of the consequences of the ignorance 
 or contravention of the principles, which I have 
 attempted to establish in the first part; and of 
 practical deductions from these principles, addressed 
 chiefly to the English clergy. But I felt the embers 
 glowing under the white ashes ; and on reflection, I 
 have considered it more expedient that the contents 
 of this small volume should be altogether in strict 
 conformity with the title ; that they should be, and 
 profess to be, no more and no other than Ideas of 
 the Constitution in Church and State. And thus I 
 may without inconsistency entreat the friendly reader 
 to bear in mind the distinction I have enforced, 
 between the exhibition of an idea, and the way of 
 acting on the same ; and that the scheme or diagram 
 best suited to make the idea clearly understood, may 
 be very different from the form in which it is or 
 may be most adequately realized. And if the reason- 
 
ADVEltTISEMENT. 
 
 ings of this work should lead him to think, that a 
 strenuous Opponent of the former attempts in Par- 
 liament may have given his support to the Bill 
 lately passed without inconsistency, and withou 
 either being or meriting the name of Apostate, it 
 may be to the improvement of his charity and good- 
 temper, and not detract a tittle from his good sense 
 or political penetration. 
 
 S. T. C. 
 
PREFATORY REMARKS. 
 
 Dear Sir, 
 
 The Bill lately passed comes so near the mark, 
 to which my convictions and wishes have through 
 my whole life, since earliest manhood, unwaveringly 
 pointed, and has so agreeably disappointed my 
 fears, that my first impulse was to suppress the 
 pages, which, in compliance with your request, I had 
 written, while the particulars of the Bill were yet 
 unknown. " I am anxious," you say, " to learn 
 from yourself the nature and grounds of your ap- 
 prehension, that the measure would fail to effect 
 the object immediately intended by its authors." 
 In answer to this, I reply, that the main ground of 
 that apprehension is certainly much narrowed ; but 
 as certainly not altogether removed. I refer to the 
 
*L 16>$- 
 
 2 
 
 securities. /And, let it be understood, that in calling 
 a certain provision hereafter specified, a security, I 
 use the word comparatively, and mean no more, 
 than that jt has at least an equal claim to be so 
 called, jis, any of those that have been hitherto pro- 
 posed as such. Whether either one or the other 
 deserve the name ; whether the thing itself is pos- 
 sible; I leave undetermined. This premised, I re- 
 sume my subject, and repeat, that/ the main objec- 
 tion, from which my fears, as to the practical 
 results of the supposed Bill were derived, applies 
 with nearly the same force to the actual Bill ; though 
 the fears themselves have, by the spirit and general 
 character of the clauses, been considerably mitigated. 
 The principle, the solemn recognition of which I 
 deemed indispensable as a security, and should be 
 willing to receive as the only security — superseding 
 the necessity, though possibly not the expediency of 
 any other, but itself by no other superseded — this 
 principle is not formally recognized. It may perhaps 
 be implied in one of the clauses (that which forbids 
 the assumption of local titles by the Romish bishops) ; 
 but this implication, even if really contained in the 
 clause, and actually intended by its framers, is not 
 
3 
 
 calculated to answer the ends, and utterly inade- 
 quate to supply the place, of the solemn and formal 
 declaration which I had required, and which, with 
 my motives and reasons for the same, it will be the 
 object of the following pages to set forth. 
 
 But to enable you fully to understand, and fairly 
 to appreciate, my arguments, I must previously state 
 (what I at least judge to be) the true Idea of a 
 constitution ; and, likewise, of a national 
 church. Arid in giving the essential character of 
 the latter, I shall briefly specify its distinction from 
 the Church of Christ, and its contra-distinction 
 from a third form, which is neither national nor 
 Christian, but irreconcileable with, and subversive >■ 
 
 of, both. By an idea, I mean, (in this instance ) 2 ^ fci ^^4^ 
 that conception of a thing, which is not abstracted " ?%^w -^ 
 from any particular state, form, or mode, in whicrys^^ <! ^ u . / ^t 
 the thing may happen to exist at this or that time; ^*T^Zj^Jj' 
 nor yet generalized from any number or succession^* ^*j$"f'j 
 of such forms or modes, but which is given by the^^*^//^^t. 
 knowledge of its ultimate aim. Only one observa^ 
 
 tion I must be allowed to add, that this knowledge^^/~jy^/z 
 or sense, may very well exist, aye, and powerfully^£/^>^W0 
 influence a man's thoughts and actions, without his »t^4^6.dix^t^LAtuJ 
 
4 
 
 being distinctly conscious of the same, much more 
 without his being competent to express it in definite 
 words. This, indeed, is one of the points which 
 distinguish ideas from conceptions, both terms being 
 used in their strict and proper significations. The 
 latter, i. e. a conception, consists in a conscious act 
 of the understanding, bringing any given object or 
 impression into the same class with any number of 
 other objects, or impressions, by means of some 
 character or characters common to them all. Con- 
 cipimus, id est, capimus hoc cum illo, — we take hold 
 of both at once, we comprehend a thing, when we 
 have learnt to comprise it in a known class. On 
 the other hand, it is the privilege of the few to 
 possess an idea : of the generality of men, it might 
 be more truly affirmed, that they are possessed by 
 it. What is here said, will, I hope, suffice as a 
 popular explanation. For some of my readers, how- 
 ever, the following definition may not, perhaps, 
 be useless or unacceptable. That which, contem- 
 plated objectively (t. e. as existing externally to the 
 mind), we call a law ; the same contemplated sub- 
 jectively (i. e. as existing in a subject or mind), is 
 an idea. Hence Plato often names ideas laws ; and 
 
Lord Bacon, the British Plato, describes the Laws 
 of the material universe as the Ideas in nature. Quod 
 in natura naturata lex, in natura naturante idea 
 dicitur. By way of illustration take the following. 
 Every reader of Rousseau, or of Hume's Essays, will 
 understand me when T refer to the Original Social 
 Contract, assumed by Rousseau, and by other and 
 wiser men before him, as the basis of all legitimate 
 government. Now, if this be taken as the assertion 
 of an historical fact, or as the application of a con- 
 ception, generalized from ordinary compacts between 
 man and man, or nation and nation, to an actual 
 occurrence in the first ages of the world, namely, 
 the formation of the first contract, in which men 
 covenanted with each other to associate, or in which 
 a multitude entered into a compact with a few, the 
 one to be governed and the other to govern, under 
 certain declared conditions, I shall run little hazard 
 at this time of day, in declaring the pretended fact 
 a pure fiction, and the conception of such a fact an 
 idle fancy. It is at once false and foolish.* For 
 
 * I am not indeed certain, that some operatical farce, under 
 the name of a Social Contract or Compact, might not have been 
 acted by the Uluminati and Constitution-manufacturers, at the 
 
6 
 
 what if an original contract had actually been entered 
 into, and formally recorded? Still I cannot see 
 what addition of moral force would be gained by the 
 fact. The same sense of moral obligation which 
 binds us to keep it, must have pre-existed in the 
 same force and in relation to the same duties, im- 
 pelling our ancestors to make it. For what could it 
 do more than bind the contracting parties to act 
 for the general good, according to their best lights 
 and opportunities? It is evident, that no specific 
 scheme or constitution can derive any other claim no 
 our reverence, than the presumption of its necessity 
 or fitness for the general good shall give it; and 
 which claim of course ceases, or rather is reversed, 
 as soon this general presumption of its utility has 
 given place to as general a conviction of the con- 
 trary. From duties anterior to the formation of the 
 contract,(because they arise out of the very consti- 
 tution of our humanity, which supposes the social 
 state^)in order to a rightful removal of the institution, 
 
 close of the eighteenth century ; a period which how far it de- 
 served the name, so complacently affixed to it by the contempo- 
 raries, of " this enlightened age," may be doubted. That it was 
 an age of Enlighteners, no man will deny. 
 
or law, thus agreed on, it is required that the con- 
 viction of its inexpediency shall be as general, as 
 the presumption of its fitness was at the time of 
 its establishment. This, the first of the two great 
 paramount interests of the social state demand?, 
 namely, that of p ermanen ce : and to attribute more A^" 
 than this to any fundamental articles, passed into 
 law by any assemblage of individuals, is an injustice 
 to their successors, and a high offence against the 
 other great interest of the social state, namely, — its 
 p rogressive improvemen t. The conception, therefore, 
 of an original contract, is, we repeat, incapable of his- 
 toric proof as a fact, and it is senseless as a theory. 
 
 But if instead of the conception or theory of 
 an original social contract, you say the idea of 
 an ever-originating social contract, this is so cer- 
 tain and so indispensable," that it constitutes the 
 whole ground of the difference between subject and 
 serf, between a commonwealth and a slave-planta- 
 tion. And this, again, is evolved out of the yet 
 higher idea of person, in contra-distinction from 
 thing, — all social law and justice being grounded on 
 the principle, that a person can never, but by his 
 own fault, become a thing, or, without grievous 
 
8 
 wrong, be treated as such : and the distinction' 
 consisting in this, that a thing may be used alto- 
 gether and merely as the means to an end ; but the 
 person must always be included in the end : his in- 
 terest must form a part of the objects, a means to 
 which, he, by consent, i. e. by his own act, makes 
 himself." We plant a tree, and we fell it ; we breed 
 the sheep, and we shear or we kill it ; in both cases 
 wholly as means to our ends. For trees and ani- 
 mals are things. The wood -cutter and the hind are 
 likewise employed as means, but on agreement, and 
 that too an agreement of reciprocal advantage, which 
 includes them as well as their employer in the end. 
 For they are persons. And the government, under 
 which the contrary takes place, is not worthy to be 
 called a state, if, as in the kingdom of Dahomy, 
 it be unprogressive ; or only by anticipation, where, 
 as in Russia, it is in advance to a better and more 
 man-worthy order of things. Now, notwithstanding 
 the late wonderful spread of learning through the 
 community, and though the schoolmaster and the 
 lecturer are abroad, the hind and the woodman may, 
 very conceivably, pass from cradle to coffin, without 
 having once contemplated this idea, so as to be 
 
9 
 
 conscious of the same. And there would be an 
 improbability in the supposition that they possessed 
 the power of presenting it to the minds of others, 
 or even to their own thoughts, verbally as a distinct 
 proposition. But no man, who has ever listened to 
 laborers of this rank, iu any alehouse, over the 
 Saturday night's jug of beer, discussing the injustice 
 of the present rate of wages, and the iniquity of 
 their being paid in part out of the parish poor-rates, 
 will doubt for a moment that they are fully possessed 
 by the idea. 
 
 In close, though not perhaps obvious, connec- 
 tion/ with this, is the idea of moral freedom, as 
 the ground of our proper responsibility. Speak to 
 a young Liberal, fresh from Edinburgh or Hackney, 
 or the Hospitals, of Free-will, as implied in Free- 
 agency, he will perhaps confess to you with a smile, 
 that he is a Necessitarian, — proceeds to assure you, 
 that the liberty of the will is an impossible concep- 
 tion, a contradiction in terms,* and finish by recom- 
 
 * See Aids to Reflection, p. 226 ; where this is shewn to be 
 one of the distinguishing characters of ideas, and marks at once 
 the difference between an idea (a truth-power of the reason) and 
 a conception of the understanding ; viz. that the former, as ex- 
 pressed in words, is always, and necessarily, a contradiction in 
 terms. 
 
10 
 
 mending you to read Jonathan Edwards, or Dr. 
 Crombie : or as it may happen, he may declare the 
 will itself, a mere delusion, a non-entity, and ask 
 you if you have read Mr. Lawrence's Lecture. 
 Converse on the same subject with a plain, single- 
 minded, yet reflecting neighbour, and he may pro- 
 bably say (as St. Augustin had said long before 
 him, in reply to the question, What is Time?) I 
 know it well enough when you do not ask me. But 
 alike with both the supposed parties, the self-com- 
 placent student, just as certainly as with your less 
 positive neighbour — attend to their actions, their 
 feelings, and even to their words : and you will be 
 in ill luck, if ten minutes pass without affording you 
 full and satisfactory proof, that the idea of man's 
 moral freedom possesses and modifies their whole 
 practical being, in all they say, in all they feel, in 
 all they do and are done to ; even as the spirit of 
 life, which is contained in no vessel, because it 
 permeates all. 
 
 Just so is it with the * constitution. Ask any of 
 
 * I do not say, with the idea : for the constitution itself is an 
 Idea. This will sound like a paradox or a sneer to those with 
 whom an Idea is but another word for a fancy, a something un- 
 real ; but not to those who in the ideas contemplate the most real 
 of all realities, and of all operative powers the most actual. 
 
11 
 
 our politicians what is meant by the constitution, 
 and it is ten to one that he will give you a false 
 explanation, ex. gr. that it is the body of our laws, 
 or that it is the Bill of Rights ; or perhaps, if he 
 have read Tom Payne, he may tell you, that we 
 have not yet got one ; and yet not an hour may 
 have elapsed, since you heard the same individual 
 denouncing, and possibly with good reason, this or 
 that code of laws, the excise and revenue laws, 
 or those for including pheasants, or those for ex- 
 cluding Catholics, as altogether unconstitutional : 
 and such and such acts of parliament as gross 
 outrages on the constitution. Mr. Peel, who is 
 rather remarkable for groundless and unlucky con- 
 cessions, owned that the present Bill breaks in on 
 the constitution of 1688 : and a very imposing 
 minority of the then House of Lords, with a decisive 
 majority in the Lower House of Convocation, de- 
 nounced the constitution of 1688, as breaking in on 
 the English Constitution. 
 
 But a Constitution is an idea arising out of the 
 idea of a state ; and because our whole history from 
 Alfred onward demonstrates the continued influence 
 of such an idea, or ultimate aim, on the minds of our 
 
12 
 
 fore-fathers, in their characters and functions as 
 public men ; alike in what they resisted and in 
 what they claimed ; in the institutions and form s 
 of polity which they established, and with regard 
 to those, against which they more or less successfully 
 contended ; and because the result has been a pro- 
 gressive, though not always a direct, or equable 
 advance, in the gradual realization of the idea ; and 
 that it is actually, though even because it is an idea 
 it cannot be adequately represented, in a correspon- 
 dent scheme of means really existing; we speak, 
 and have a right to speak, of the idea itself, as 
 actually existing, i. e., as a principle, existing in 
 the only way in which a principle can exist — in the 
 minds and consciences of the persons, whose duties 
 it prescribes, and whose rights it determines. In 
 the same sense that the sciences of arithmetic and of 
 geometry, that mind, that life itself, have reality ; 
 
 the constitution, has real existence, and does not 
 A 
 
 the less exist in reality, because it both is, and exists 
 as, an Idea. There is yet another ground for the 
 affirmation of its reality ; that, as the fundamental 
 idea, it is at the same time, the final criterion by 
 which all particular frames of government must be 
 
13 
 
 tried : for here only can we find the great constructive 
 principles of our representative system (I use the 
 term in its widest sense, in which the crown itself 
 is included as representing the unity of the people, 
 the true and primary sense of the* word majesty); 
 those principles, I say, in the light of which it can 
 alone be ascertained what are excrescences, symp- 
 toms of distemperature and marks of degeneration ; 
 and what are native growths, or changes naturally 
 attendant on the progressive development of the 
 original germ, symptoms of immaturity perhaps, but 
 not of disease ; or at worst, modifications of the 
 growth by the defective or faulty, but remediless, 
 or only gradually remediable, qualities of the soil 
 and surrounding elements. 
 
 There are two other characters, distinguishing the 
 class of substantive truths, or truth-powers here 
 spoken of, that will, I trust, indemnify the reader 
 for the delay of the two or three short sentences 
 required for their explanation. The first is, that *• 
 in distinction from the conception of a thing, which 
 being abstracted or generalized from one or more 
 particular states, or modes, is necessarily posterior in 
 order of thought to the thing thus conceived, — -an 
 
14 
 
 idea, on the contrary, is in order of thought always 
 and of necessity contemplated as antecedent. In 
 the idea or principle, Life, for instance — the vital 
 functions are the result of the organization ; but this 
 organization supposes and pre-supposes the vital 
 principle. The bearings of the planets on the sun, 
 are determined by the ponderable matter of which 
 they consist ; but the principle of gravity, the law 
 in the material creation, the idea of the Creator, is 
 pre-supposed in order to the existence, yea, to the 
 very conception of the existence, of matter itself. 
 This is the first. The other distinctive mark may 
 be most conveniently given in the form of a caution. 
 We should be made aware, namely, that the parti- 
 cular form, construction, or model, that may be best 
 fitted to render the idea intelligible, may most effec- 
 tually serve the purpose of an instructive diagram, is 
 not necessarily the mode or form in which it actually 
 arrives at realization. In the works both of man and 
 of nature — in the one by the imperfection of the 
 means and materials, in the other by the multitude 
 and complexity of simultaneous purposes — the fact 
 is most often otherwise. A naturalist, (in the 
 infancy of physiology, we will suppose, and before 
 
15 
 
 the first attempts at comparative anatomy) whose 
 knowledge had been confined exclusively to the 
 human frame, or that of animals similarly organized, 
 and by this experience had been led inductively 
 to the idea of respiration, as the copula and mediator 
 of the vascular and the nervous systems — might, 
 very probably, have regarded the lungs, with their 
 appurtenants, as the only form in which this idea, 
 or ultimate aim, was realizable. Ignorant of the 
 functions of the spiracula in the insects, and of the 
 gills of the fish, he would, perhaps, with great confi- 
 dence degrade both to the class of non-respirants. 
 But alike in the works of nature and the institutions 
 of man, there is no more effectual preservative against 
 pedantry, and the positiveness of sciolism, than to 
 meditate on the law of compensation, and the prin- 
 ciple of compromise; and to be fully impressed 
 with the wide extent of the one, the necessity of 
 the other, and the frequent occurrence of both. 
 
 Having (more than sufficiently, I fear,) exercised 
 your patience with these preparatory remarks, for 
 which the anxiety to be fully understood by you is 
 my best excuse, though in a moment of less excite- 
 ment they might not have been without some claim 
 
16 
 
 to your attention for their own sake, I return to 
 the idea, which forms the present subject— the Eng- 
 lish Constitution, which an old writer calls, " Lex 
 Sacra, Mater Legum, than which (says he), nothing 
 can be proposed more certain in its grounds, more 
 pregnant in its consequences, or that hath more har- 
 monical reason within itself: and which is so conna- 
 tural and essential to the genius and innate disposition 
 of this nation, it being formed (silk-worm like) as 
 that no other law can possibly regulate it — a law 
 not to be derived from Alured, or Alfred, or Canute, 
 or other elder or later promulgators of particular 
 laws, but which might say of itself — When reason 
 and the laws of God first came, then came I with 
 them." 
 
 CONCERNING THE RIGHT IDEA OF THE CON- 
 STITUTION. 
 
 A Constitution is the attribute of a state, i. e. of a 
 body politic, having the principle of its unity within 
 itself, whether by concentration of its forces, as 
 a constitutional pure Monarchy, which, however, 
 has hitherto continued to be ens rationale, unknown 
 
17 
 
 in history (B. Spinoza Tract. Pol. cap. VI. De Mo- 
 norchia ex rationis prcescripto), — or — with which we 
 are alone concerned — by equipoise and interdepen- 
 dency : the lex equilibrii, the principle prescribing 
 the means and conditions, by and under which this 
 balance is to be established and preserved, being the 
 constitution of the state. It is the chief of many 
 blessings derived from the insular character and 
 circumstances of our country, that our social insti- 
 tutions have formed themselves out of our proper 
 needs and interests; that long and fierce as the 
 birth = struggle and the growing pains have been, the 
 antagonist powers have been of our own system, and 
 have been allowed to work out their final balance 
 with less disturbance from external forces, than was 
 possible in the Continental states. 
 
 O ne'er enchain'd nor wholly vile, 
 O Albion ! O my Mother Isle ! 
 Thy valleys fair as Eden's bowers 
 Glitter green with sunny showers ! 
 The grassy uplands' gentle swells 
 Echo to the bleat of flocks ; 
 Those grassy hills, those glittering dells, 
 Proudly ramparted with rocks : 
 And Ocean 'mid his uproar wild 
 Speaks safety to his IstANn-cHiLD ! 
 
tf. 
 
 18 
 
 Hence thro' many a fearless Age 
 
 Has social Freedom lov'd the Land, 
 
 Nor Alien Despot's jealous rage 
 
 Or warp'd thy growth or stamp'd the servile Brand. 
 
 Ode to the Departing Year, Dec. 1796. 
 
 Now, in every country of civilized men, acknow- 
 ledging the rights of property, and by means of 
 determined boundaries and common laws united into 
 one people or nation, the two antagonist powers or 
 opposite interests of the state, under which all other 
 state interests are comprised, are those of Perma- 
 nence and of Progression.* 
 
 * Permit me to draw your attention to the essential differ- 
 ence between opposite and contrary. Opposite powers are always 
 of the same kind, and tend to union, either by equipoise or by a 
 common product. Thus the + and — poles of the magnet, thus 
 positive and negative electricity are opposites. Sweet and sour 
 are opposites ; sweet and bitter, are contraries. The feminine 
 character is opposed to the masculine ; but the effeminate is its 
 contrary. Even so in the present instance, the interest of perma- 
 nence is opposed to that of progressiveness ; but so far from being 
 contrary interests, they, like the magnetic forces, suppose and 
 require each other. Even the most mobile of creatures, the 
 serpent makes a rest of its own body, and drawing up its volu- 
 minous train from behind on this fulcrum, propels itself onward. 
 On the other hand, it is a proverb in all languages, that (rela- 
 tively to man at least) what would stand still must retrograde. 
 You, my dear Sir, who have long known my notions respecting 
 the power and value of words, and the duty as well as advan- 
 tage of using them appropriately, will forgive this. 
 
19 
 
 It will not be necessary to enumerate the se- 
 veral causes that combine to connect the perma- 
 nence of a state with the land and the landed pro- 
 perty. To found a family, and to convert his wealth 
 into land, are twin thoughts, births of the same 
 moment, in the mind of the opulent merchant, when 
 he thinks of reposing from his labours. From the 
 class of the Novi Homines he redeems himself by 
 becoming the staple ring of the chain, by which the 
 present will become connected with the past; and 
 the test and evidence of permanency afforded. To 
 the same principle appertain primogeniture and here- 
 ditary titles, and the influence which these exert in 
 accumulating large masses of property, and in coun- 
 teracting the antagonist and dispersive forces, which 
 
 Many years ago, in conversing with a friend, I expressed my 
 belief, that in no instance had the false use of a word become 
 current without some practical ill consequence, of far greater 
 moment than would primo aspectu have been thought possible. 
 That friend, very lately referring to this remark, assured me, 
 that not a month had passed since then, without some instance in 
 proof of its truth having occurred in his own experience ; and 
 added, with a smile, that he had more than once amused himself 
 with the thought of a verbarian Attorney-General, authorized to 
 bring informations ex officio against the writer or editor of any 
 work in extensive circulation, who, after due notice issued, should 
 persevere in misusing a word. 
 
 c 2 
 
20 
 
 the follies, the vices, and misfortunes of individuals 
 can scarcely fail to supply. To this, likewise, tends 
 the proverbial obduracy of prejudices characteristic 
 of the humbler tillers of the soil, and their aversion 
 even to benefits that are offered in the form of inno- 
 vations. But why need I attempt to explain a fact 
 which no thinking man will deny, and where the 
 admission of the fact is all that my argument 
 requires ? 
 
 On the other hand, with as little chance of con- 
 tradiction, I may assert, that the progression of a 
 state, in the arts and comforts of life, in the diffusion 
 of the information and knowledge, useful or necessary 
 for all ; in short, all advances in civilization, and the 
 rights and privileges of citizens, are especially con- 
 nected with, and derived from, the four classes of 
 the mercantile, the manufacturing, the distributive, 
 and the professional. To early Rome, war and con- 
 quest were the substitutes for trade and commerce. 
 War was their trade. As these wars became more 
 frequent, on a larger scale, and with fewer interrup- 
 tions the liberties of the plebeians continued in- 
 creasing : for even the sugar plantations of Jamaica 
 would (in their present state, at least), present a 
 
21 
 
 softened picture of the hard and servile relation, in 
 which the plebeian formerly stood to his patrician 
 patron. 
 
 Italy is supposed at present to maintain a larger 
 number of inhabitants than in the days of Trajan, 
 or in the best and most prosperous of the Roman 
 empire. With the single exception of the ecclesiastic 
 state, the whole country is cultivated like a garden. 
 You may find there every gift of God — only not 
 freedom. It is a country, rich in the proudest 
 . records of liberty, illustrious with the names of 
 heroes, statesmen, legislators, philosophers. It 
 hath a history all alive with the virtues and crimes 
 of hostile parties, when the glories and the struggles 
 of ancient Greece were acted over again in the 
 proud republics of Venice, Genoa, and Florence. 
 The life of every eminent citizen was in constant 
 hazard from the furious factions of their native city, 
 and yet life had no charm out of its dear and 
 honored walls. All the splendors of the hospitable 
 palace, and the favor of princes, could not soothe the 
 pining of Dante or Machiavel, exiles from their free, 
 their beautiful Florence. But not a pulse of liberty 
 survives. It was the profound policy of the Austrian 
 
22 
 
 %/ffO and the Spanish courts, by every possible means 
 H ' to degrade the profession of trade; and even in 
 Pisa and Florence themselves to introduce the feudal 
 pride and prejudice of less happy, less enlightened 
 countries. Agriculture, meanwhile, with its atten- 
 dant population and plenty, was cultivated with 
 increasing success ; but from the Alps to the Straits 
 of Messina, the Italians are slaves. 
 
 We have thus divided the subjects of the state 
 into two orders, the agricultural or possessors of 
 land ; and the merchant, manufacturer, the distri- 
 butive, and the professional bodies, under the com- 
 mon name of citizens. And we have now to add 
 that by the nature of things common to every 
 civilized country, at all events by the course of events 
 in this country, the first is subdivided into two 
 classes, which, in imitation of our old law books, 
 we may intitle the Major and Minor Barons; both 
 these, either by their interests or by the very effect 
 of their situation, circumstances, and the nature of 
 their employment, vitally connected with the perma- 
 nency of the state, its institutions, rights, customs, 
 manners, privileges — and as such, opposed to the 
 inhabitants of ports, towns, and cities, who are in 
 
23 
 
 like manner and from like causes more especially 
 connected with its progression. I scarcely need say, 
 that in a very advanced stage of civilization, the 
 two orders of society will more and more modify 
 and leaven each other, yet never so completely but 
 that the distinct character remains legible, and to 
 use the words of the Roman Emperor, even in what 
 is struck out the erasure is manifest At all times 
 the lower of the two ranks, of which the first order 
 consists, or the Franklins, will, in their political 
 sympathies, draw more nearly to the antagonist 
 order than the first rank. On these facts, which 
 must at all times have existed, though in very dif- 
 ferent degrees of prominence or maturity, the prin- 
 ciple of our constitution was established. The total 
 interests of the country, the interests of the state, 
 were entrusted to a great council or parliament, com- 
 posed of two Houses. The first consisting exclu- 
 sively of the Major Barons, who at once stood as 
 the guardians and sentinels of their several estates 
 and privileges, and the representatives of the common 
 weal. The Minor Barons, or Franklins, too nume- 
 rous, and yet individually too weak, to sit and 
 maintain their rights in person, were to choose 
 
24 
 
 among the worthiest of their own body representa- 
 tives, and these in such number as to form an im- 
 portant though minor proportion of a second House 
 — the majority of which was formed by the repre- 
 sentatives chosen by the cities, ports, and boroughs ; 
 which representatives ought on principle to have 
 been elected not only by, but from among, the mem- 
 bers of the manufacturing, mercantile, distributive, 
 and professional classes. 
 
 These four classes, by an arbitrary but convenient 
 use of the phrase, I will designate by the name of 
 the Personal Interest, as the exponent of all move- 
 able and personal possessions, including skill and 
 acquired knowledge, the moral and intellectual stock 
 in trade of the professional man and the artist, 
 no less than the raw materials, and the means of 
 elaborating, transporting, and distributing them. 
 
 Thus in the theory of the constitution it was pro- 
 vided, that even though both divisions of the Landed 
 Interest should combine in any legislative attempt 
 to encroach on the rights and privileges of the 
 Personal Interest, yet the representatives of the 
 latter forming the clear and effectual majority of 
 the lower House, the attempt must be abortive : 
 
25 
 
 the majority of votes in both Houses being indis- 
 pensable, in order to the presentation of a bill for the 
 Completory Act, — that is/ to make it a law of the 
 land. By force of the same mechanism must every 
 attack be baffled that should be made by the repre- 
 sentatives of the minor landholders, in concert with 
 the burgesses, on the existing rights and privileges 
 of the peerage, and of the hereditary aristocracy, of 
 which the peerage is the summit and the natural 
 protector. Lastly, should the nobles join to invade 
 the rights and franchises of the Franklins and the 
 Yeomanry, the sympathy of interest, by which the 
 inhabitants of cities, towns, and sea-ports, are linked 
 to the great body of the agricultural fellow-com- 
 moners, who supply their markets and form their 
 principal customers, and even the sympathy of 
 feeling between the burgess senators and the county 
 representatives, as members of the same House, and 
 the consciousness of the dignity conferred by the 
 latter on the former — for the notion of superior 
 dignity will always be attached in the minds of 
 men to that kind of property with which they have 
 most associated the idea of permanence : and the 
 land is the synonime of country — this affinity, I 
 
26 
 
 say, both of interest and fellow-feeling, could not 
 fail to secure a united and successful resistance. 
 
 That the burgesses were not bound to elect repre- 
 sentatives from among their own order, individuals 
 
 bona fide belonging to one or other of the four 
 
 a. 
 divisions above enumerated ; that the elective fran- 
 chise of the towns, ports, &c, first invested with 
 borough-rights, was not made conditional, and to 
 a certain extent at least dependant on their retaining 
 the same comparative wealth and independence, and 
 rendered subject to a periodical revisal and re-ad- 
 justment; that in consequence of these and other 
 causes, the very weights intended for the effectual 
 counterpoise of the great land-holders, have, in the 
 course of events, been shifted into the opposite scale ; 
 that they now constitute a large proportion of the 
 political power and influence of the very class, 
 whose personal cupidity, and whose partial views of 
 the landed interest at large they were meant to keep 
 in check ; these are no part of the constitution, no 
 essential ingredients, in the idea, but apparent de- 
 fects and imperfections in its realization — which, 
 however, we will neither regret nor set about amend- 
 ing, till we have seen whether an equivalent force 
 
27 
 
 had not arisen to supply the deficiency — a force 
 great enough to have destroyed the equilibrium, had 
 not such a transfer taken place previously to, or 
 at the same time with, the operation of the new 
 forces. Roads, canals, machinery, the press, the 
 periodical and daily press, the might of public 
 opinion, the consequent increasing desire of popu- 
 larity among public men and functionaries of every 
 description, and the increasing necessity of public 
 character, as a means or condition of political influ- 
 ence — I need but mention these to stand acquitted of 
 having started a vague and naked possibility in 
 extenuation of an evident and palpable abuse. 
 
 But whether my conjecture be well or ill grounded, 
 the principle of the constitution remains the same. 
 That harmonious balance of the two great corres- 
 pondent, at once supporting and counterpoising, 
 interests of the state, its permanence, and its pro- 
 gression : that balance of the landed and the personal 
 interests was to be secured by a legislature of two 
 Houses ; the first consisting wholly of barons or 
 landholders, permanent and hereditary senators; 
 the second of the knights or minor barons, elected 
 by, and as the representatives of, the remaining 
 
28 
 
 landed community, together with the burgesses, the 
 representatives of the commercial, manufacturing, 
 distributive, and professional classes, — the latter (the 
 elected b urges ses) constituting the major number. 
 The king, meanwhile, in whom the executive power 
 is vested, it will suffice at present to consider as the 
 beam of the constitutional scales. A more compre- 
 hensive view of the kingly office must be deferred, 
 till the remaining problem (the idea of a national 
 church) has been solved. 
 
 I must here intreat the reader to bear in mind 
 what I have before endeavored to impress on him, 
 that I am not giving an historical account of the 
 legislative body ; ?ior can I be supposed to assert 
 that such was the earliest mode or form in which 
 the national council was constructed. My asser- 
 tion is simply this, that its formation has advanced 
 in this direction. The line of evolution, however 
 sinuous, has still tended to this point, sometimes 
 with, sometimes without, not seldom, perhaps, 
 against, the intention of the individual actors, but 
 always as if a power, greater, and better, than the 
 men themselves had intended it for them. Nor let 
 it be forgotten that every new growth, every power 
 
29 
 
 and privilege, bought or extorted, has uniformly 
 been claimed by an antecedent right ; not acknow- 
 ledged as a boon conferred, but both demanded and 
 received as what had always belonged to them, 
 though withheld by violence and the injury of the 
 times. This too, in cases, where, if documents and 
 historical records, or even consistent traditions, had 
 been required in evidence, the monarch would have 
 had the better of the argument. But, in truth, it 
 was no more than a practical way of saying, it 
 is contained in the idea of our government, and 
 it is a consequence of the " Lex, Mater Legum," 
 which, in the very first law of state that was pro- 
 mulgated in the land, was pre-supposed as the 
 ground of that first law. 
 
 Before I conclude this part of my subject, I must 
 press on your attention, that the preceding is offered 
 only as the constitutional idea of the State. In order 
 to correct views respecting the constitution, in the 
 more enlarged sense of the term, viz. the constitution 
 of the Nation in addition to a grounded knowledge 
 of the State, we must have the right idea of the 
 National Church. These are two poles of the same 
 
30 
 
 magnet ; the magnet itself, which is constituted by 
 them, is the constitution of the nation. 
 
 The reading of histories, my dear Sir, may dispose 
 a man to satire ; but the science of history, but 
 history studied in the light of philosophy, as the 
 great drama of an ever unfolding Providence, has a 
 very different effect. It infuses hope and reverential 
 thoughts of man and his destination. To you, there- 
 fore, it will be no unwelcome result, though it should 
 be made appear that something deeper and better 
 than priestcraft and priest-ridden ignorance was at 
 the bottom of the phrase, Church and State, and 
 intitled it to be the form in which so many thousands 
 of the men of England clothed the wish for their 
 country's weal. But many things have conspired to 
 draw off the attention from its true origin and im- 
 port, and have led us to seek the reasons for thus 
 connecting the two words, in facts and motives, that 
 lie nearer the surface. I will mention one only, be- 
 cause, though less obvious than many other causes 
 that have favoured the general misconception on this 
 point, and though its action is indirect and negative, 
 it is by no means the least operative. The imme- 
 
' 31 
 
 diate effect, indeed, may be confined to the men of 
 education. But what influences these, will finally 
 influence all. I am referring to the noticeable fact, 
 arising out of the system of instruction pursued in 
 all our classical schools and universities, that the 
 annals of ancient Greece, and of republican and 
 imperial Rome, though they are, in fact, but bril- 
 liant exceptions of history generally, do yet, partly 
 from the depth and intensity of all early impres- 
 sions, and in part, from the number and splendor of 
 individual characters and particular events and ex- 
 ploits, so fill the imagination, as almost to be, — 
 during the period, when the groundwork of our 
 minds is principally formed, and the direction given 
 to our modes of thinking, — what we mean by his- 
 tory. Hence things, of which no instance or 
 analogy is recollected in the customs, policy, and 
 legisprudence of Greece and Rome, lay little hold 
 on our attention. Among these, I know not one 
 more worthy of notice, than the principle of the 
 division of property, which, if not, as I however 
 think, universal in the earliest ages, was common 
 to the Scandinavian, Celtic, and Gothic tribes, with 
 the Semitic, or the tribes descended from Shem. 
 
32 
 
 It is not the least among the obligations, which 
 the antiquarian and the philosophic statist owe to 
 a tribe of the last-mentioned race, the Hebrew I 
 mean, that in the institutes of their great legislators, 
 who first formed them into a state or nation, they 
 have preserved for us a practical illustration of this 
 principle in question, which was by no means pecu- 
 liar to the Hebrew people, though in their case it 
 received a peculiar sanction. But to confound the 
 inspiring spirit with the informing word, and both 
 with the dictation of sentences and formal propo- 
 sitions ; and to confine the office and purpose of 
 inspiration to the miraculous immission, or infusion, 
 of novelties, rebus nusquam prius visis, vel auditis, 
 — these, alas ! are the current errors of Protestants 
 without learning, and of bigots in spite of it ; but 
 which I should have left unnoticed, but for the in- 
 jurious influence which certain notions in close con- 
 nexion with these errors have had on the present 
 subject. The notion, I mean, that the Levitical 
 institution was not only enacted by an inspired Law- 
 giver, not only a work of revealed wisdom, (which 
 who denies?) but that it was a part of revealed 
 Religion, having its origin in this particular reve- 
 
33 
 
 lation, and which could not have existed otherwise; 
 yet, on the other hand, a part of the religion that had 
 been abolished by Christianity. Had these reasoners 
 contented themselves with asserting, that it did not 
 belong to the Christian Religion, they would have 
 said nothing more than the truth ; and for this plain 
 reason, that it forms no part of religion at all, in 
 the Gospel sense of the word, — that is, Religion 
 as contra-distinguished from Law ; spiritual, as con- 
 tra-distinguished from temporal or political. 
 
 In answer to all these notions, it is enough to say, 
 that not the principle itself, but the superior wisdom 
 with which the principle was carried into effect, the 
 greater perfection of the machinery, forms the true 
 distinction, the peculiar worth, of the Hebrew con- 
 stitution. It was common to Goth and Celt, or 
 rather, I would say, to all the tribes that had not 
 fallen off to either of the two Aphelia, or extreme 
 distances from the generic character of man, the wild 
 or the barbarous state ; but who remained either parts 
 or appendages of the stirps generosa sen historica, 
 as a philosophic friend has named that portion of 
 the Semitic and Japetic races, that had not degene- 
 rated below the conditions of progressive civiliza- 
 
 D 
 
34 
 
 tion : — it was, I say, common to all the primitive 
 races, that in taking possession of a new country, 
 and in the division of the land into her/jfitable 
 estates among the individual warriors or heads of 
 families, a reserve should be made for the nation 
 itself. 
 
 The sum total of these heritable portions, appro- 
 priated each to an individual Lineage, I beg leave 
 to name the Propriety; and to call the reserve 
 above-mentioned the Nationalty ; and likewise to 
 employ the term wealth, in that primary and wide 
 sense which it retains in the term, Commonwealth. 
 In the establishment, then, of the landed proprieties, 
 a nationalty was at the same time constituted : as 
 a wealth not consisting of lands, but yet derivative 
 from the land, and rightfully inseparable from the 
 same. These, the Propriety and the Nationalty, were 
 the two constituent factors, the opposite, but cor- 
 respondent and reciprocally supporting, counter- 
 weights, of the commonwealth ; the existence of 
 the one being the condition, and the perfecting, 
 of the rightfulness of the other. Now as all polar 
 forces, i. e. opposite, not contrary, powers, are 
 necessarily unius generis, homogeneous, so, in the 
 
35 
 
 present instance, each is that which it is called, 
 relatively, by predominance of the one character or 
 quality, not by the absolute exclusion of the other. 
 The wealth appropriated was not so entirely a 
 property as not to remain, to a certain extent, 
 national; nor was the wealth reserved so exclu- 
 sively national, as not to admit of individual 
 tenure. It was only necessary that the mode and 
 origin of the tenure should be different, and in anti- 
 thesis, a,s it were, Ex.gr. If the one be hereditary, 
 the other must be elective ; if the one be lineal, the 
 other must be circulative. 
 
 In the unfolding and exposition of any idea, we 
 naturally seek assistance and the means of illustra- 
 tion from the historical instance, in which it has been 
 most nearly realized, or of which we possess the 
 most exact and satisfactory records. Both of these 
 recommendations are found in the formation of the 
 Hebrew Commonwealth. But, in availing ourselves 
 of examples from history, there is always danger, 
 lest that, which was to assist us in attaining a clear 
 insight into truth, should be the means of disturbing 
 or falsifying it, so that we attribute to the object 
 what was but the effect of flaws, or other accidents 
 d 2 
 
36 
 
 in the glass, through which we looked at it. To 
 secure ourselves from this danger, we must con- 
 stantly bear in mind, that in the actual realization 
 of every great idea or principle, there will always 
 exist disturbing forces, modifying the product, either 
 from the imperfection of the agents,, or from especial 
 circumstances overruling them ; or from the defect of 
 the materials ; or lastly, (and which most particularly 
 applies to the instances we have here in view,) 
 from the co-existence of some yet greater idea, some 
 yet more important purpose, with which the former 
 must be combined, but likewise subordinated. 
 Nevertheless, these are no essentials of the idea, 
 no exemplary parts in the particular construction 
 adduced for its illustration. On the contrary, they 
 are deviations from the idea, from which we must 
 abstract, which we must put aside, before we can 
 make a safe and fearless use of the example. 
 
 Such, for instance, was the settlement of the 
 nationalty in one tribe, which, to the exclusion of 
 the eleven other divisions of the Hebrew confederacy, 
 was to be invested with its rights, and to be capable 
 of discharging its duties. This was, indeed, in 
 some measure, corrected by the institution of the 
 
37 
 
 Nabim, or Prophets, who might be of any tribe, and 
 who formed a numerous body, uniting the functions 
 and threefold character of the Roman Censors, the 
 Tribunes of the people, and the sacred college of 
 Augurs ; protectors of the Nation and privileged 
 state-moralists, whom, you will recollect, our Milton 
 has already compared * to the orators of the Greek 
 Democracies. Still the most satisfactory justification 
 of this exclusive policy, is to be found, I think, in 
 the fact, that the Jewish Theocracy itself was but 
 a means to a further and greater end ; and that the 
 effects of the policy were subordinated to an interest, 
 far more momentous than that of any single kingdom 
 
 * The lines which our sage and learned poet puts in the 
 Saviour's mouth, both from their truth and appositeness to the 
 present subject, well deserve to be quoted . — 
 
 " Their orators thou then extoll'st, as those 
 The top of eloquence : — Statists indeed 
 And lovers of their country as may seem ; 
 But herein to our prophets far beneath, 
 As men divinely taught and better teaching 
 The solid rules of civil government, 
 In their majestic, unaffected style, 
 Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome. 
 In them is plainest taught and easiest learnt 
 What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so." 
 
 Par. Reg. B. iv. 
 
38 
 
 or commonwealth could be. The unfitness and in- 
 sufficiency of the Jewish character for the reception 
 and execution of the great legislator's scheme were 
 not less important parts of the sublime purpose of 
 Providence in the separation of the chosen people, 
 than their characteristic virtues. Their frequent 
 relapses, and the never-failing return of a certain 
 number to the national faith and customs, were 
 alike subservient to the ultimate object, the final 
 cause, of the Mosaic dispensation. Without pain or 
 reluctance, therefore, I should state this provision, 
 by which a particular lineage was made a necessary 
 qualification for the trustees and functionaries o* 
 the reserved nationalty, as the main cause of 
 the comparatively little effect, which the Levitical 
 establishment produced on the moral and intel- 
 lectual character of the Jewish people, during the 
 whole period of their existence as an independent 
 state. 
 
 With this exception, however, the scheme of the 
 Hebrew polity may be profitably made use of, as 
 the diagram or illustrative model of a principle which 
 actuated the primitive races generally under similar 
 circumstances. With this, and one other exception, 
 
 ^2§p 
 
39 
 
 likewise arising out of the peculiar purpose of Pro- 
 vidence, as before stated, namely, the discouragement 
 of trade and commerce in the Hebrew policy ,/^a 
 principle so inwoven in the whole fabric, that the 
 revolution in this respect effected by Solomon had 
 no small share in the quickly succeeding dissolution 
 of the confederacyj^it may be profitably considered 
 even under existing circumstances. 
 
 And first, let me observe, with the Celtic, Gothic, 
 and Scandinavian, equally as with the Hebrew 
 tribes, Property by absolute right existed only in 
 a tolerated alien ; and there was everywhere a 
 prejudice against the occupation expressly directed 
 to its acquirement, viz. the trafficking with the 
 current representatives of wealth. Even in that 
 species of possession, in which the right of the 
 individual was the prominent relative character, the 
 institution of the Jubilee provided against its dege- 
 neracy into the merely personal; reclaimed it for the 
 state, — that is, for the line, the heritage, as one of 
 the permanent units, or integral parts, the aggregate 
 of which constitutes the state, in that narrower and 
 especial sense, in which it has been distinguished 
 from the nation. And to these permanent units the 
 
40 
 calculating and govgrning mind of the state directs 
 its attention, even as it is the depths, breadths, bays, 
 and windings or reaches of a river, that are the sub- 
 ject of the hydrographer, not the water-drops, that 
 at any one moment constitute the stream. And 
 on this point the greatest stress should be laid ; 
 this should be deeply impressed, carefully borne in 
 mind, that the abiding interests, the estates, and 
 ostensible tangible properties, not the persons as 
 persons, are the proper subjects of the state in this 
 sense, or of the power of the parliament or supreme 
 council, as the representatives and plenipotentiaries 
 of the state, i. e. of the Propriety, and in dis- 
 tinction from the commonwealth, in which I com- 
 prize both the Propriety and the Nationalty. 
 
 And here permit me, for the last time, I trust, to 
 encroach on your patience, by remarking, that the 
 records of the Hebrew policy are rendered far less 
 instructive as lessons of political wisdom, by Jthj, *»*- 
 disposition to regard the Jehovah, in that universal 
 and spiritual acceptation, in which we use the word 
 as Christians. But relatively to the Jewish polity, 
 the Jehovah was their covenanted king : and if we 
 draw any inference from the former, the Christian 
 
41 
 
 sense of the term, it should be this — that God is the 
 unity of every nation ; that the convictions and the 
 will, which are one, the same, and simultaneously 
 acting in a multitude of individual agents, are 
 not the birth of any individual ; " that when the 
 people speak loudly and unanimously, it is from 
 their being strongly impressed by the godhead 
 or the demon. Only exclude the supposition of 
 a demoniac possession, and then Vox Populi Vox 
 Dei." So thought Sir Philip Sydney, who in 
 the great revolution of the Netherlands considered 
 the universal and simultaneous adoption of the 
 same principles, as a proof of the divine presence, 
 and on that belief, and on that alone, grounded 
 his assurance of its successful result. And that I 
 may apply this to the present subject, it was in 
 the character of the king, as the majesty, or symbolic 
 unity of the whole nation, both of the state and 
 of the persons; it was in the name of the king, 
 in whom both the propriety and the nationalty 
 ideally centered, and from whom, as from a foun- 
 tain, they are ideally supposed to flow, that the 
 proclamation throughout the land, by sound of 
 trumpet, was made to all possessors : " The land 
 
42 
 
 is not your's, saith the Lord, the land is mine. To 
 you I lent it." The voice of the trumpets is not, 
 indeed, heard in this country. But as intelligibly is 
 it declared, by the spirit and history of our laws, 
 that the possession of a property, not connected with 
 especial duties, a property not fiduciary or official, 
 but arbitrary and unconditional, was in the light of 
 our forefathers the brand of a Jew and an alien ; not 
 the distinction, not the right, or honour, of an Eng- 
 lish baron or gentleman. 
 
 After these introductory preparations, I can have 
 no difficulty in setting forth the right idea of a 
 national church as(in the language of Elizabeth) the 
 third great venerable estate of the realm. The first 
 being the estate of the land-owners or possessors of 
 fixed property, consisting of the two classes of the 
 Barons and the Franklins ; the second comprising 
 the merchants, the manufacturers, free artizans, and 
 the distributive class. To comprehend, therefore, 
 this third estate, in whom the reserved nationalty 
 was vested, we must first ascertain the end, or 
 national purpose, for which it was reserved. 
 
 Now, as. in the former state, the permanency of 
 the nation was provided for ; and in the second 
 
43 
 
 estate its progressiveness, and personal freedom ; 
 while in the king the cohesion by interdependence, 
 and the unity of the country, were established; there 
 remains for the third estate only that interest, which 
 is the ground, the necessary antecedent condition, of 
 both the former. All these were dependent on a t 
 continuing and progressive civilization ; but civiliza- 
 tion is itself but a mixed good, if not far more a 
 corrupting influence, the hectic of disease, not the 
 bloom of health, and a nation so distinguished more 
 fitly to be called a varnished than a polished people ; 
 where this civilization is not grounded in cultiva- 
 tion, in the harmonious development of those qua- 
 lities and faculties that characterise our humanity. 
 In short, we must be men in order to be citizens. 
 The Nationalty, therefore, was reserved for the sup- 
 port and maintenance of a permanent class or order, 
 with the following duties. A certain smaller number 
 were to remain at the fountain heads of the humani- 
 ties, in cultivating and enlarging the knowledge 
 already possessed, and in watching over the interests 
 of physical and moral science; being, likewise, the 
 instructors of such as constituted, or were to con- 
 stitute, the remaining more numerous classes of the 
 
44 
 
 order. This latter and far more numerous body were 
 to be distributed throughout the country, so as not 
 to leave even the smallest integral part or division 
 without a resident guide, guardian, and instructor ; 
 the object and final intention of the whole order 
 being thus to preserve the stores, to guard the 
 treasures of past civilization, and thus to bind the 
 present with the past, to perfect and add to the same, 
 and thus to connect the present with the future, but 
 especially to diffuse through the whole community, 
 and to every native entitled to its laws and rights, 
 that quantity and quality of knowledge which was 
 indispensable both for the understanding of those 
 rights, and for the performance of the duties corres- 
 pondent. Finally, to secure for the nation, if not a 
 superiority over the neighbouring states, yet an 
 equality at least, in that character of general civi- 
 lization, which equally with,, or rather more than, 
 fleets, armies, and revenue, forms the ground of its 
 defensive and offensive power. The object of the 
 two former estates of the realm, which conjointly 
 form the state, was to reconcile the interests of per- 
 manence with that of progression — law with liberty. 
 The object of the National Church, the third 
 
45 
 
 remaining estate of the realm, was to secure and 
 improve that civilization, without which the nation 
 could be neither permanent nor progressive. 
 
 That in all ages individuals, who have directed 
 their meditations and their studies to the nobler 
 characters of our nature, to the cultivation of those 
 powers and instincts which constitute the man, at 
 least separate him from the animal, and distinguish 
 the nobler from the animal part of his own being, 
 will be led by the supernatural in themselves to the 
 contemplation of a power which is likewise super- 
 human; that science, and especially moral science, 
 will lead to religion, and remain blended with it — 
 this, I say, will, in all ages, be the course of things. 
 That in the earlier ages, and in the dawn of civility, 
 there will be a twilight in which science and religion 
 give light, but a light refracted through the dense 
 and the dark, a superstition — this is what we learn 
 from history, and what philosophy would have taught 
 us to expect. But we affirm, that in the spiritual 
 purpose of the word, and as understood in reference 
 to a future state, and to the abiding essential interest 
 of the individual as a person, and not as the citizen, 
 neighbour, or subject, religion may be an indispen- 
 
46 
 
 sable ally, but is not the essential constitutive end 
 of that national institute, which is unfortunately, at 
 least improperly, styled a church — a name which, 
 in its best sense is exclusively appropriate to the 
 church of Christ. If this latter be ecclesia, the 
 communion of such as are called out of the world, 
 i. e. in reference to the especial ends and purposes 
 of that communion ; this other might more expres- 
 sively have been entitled enclesia, or an order of 
 men, chosen in and of the realm, and constituting 
 an estate of that realm. And in fact, such was the 
 original and proper sense of the more appropriately 
 named clergy. It comprehended the learned of 
 all names, and the clerk was the synonyme of the 
 man of learning. Nor can any fact more strikingly 
 illustrate the conviction entertained by our ancestors, 
 respecting the intimate connexion of this clergy 
 with the peace and weal of the nation, than the 
 privilege formerly recognized by our laws, in the 
 well-known phrase, " benefit of clergy." 
 
 From the narrow limits prescribed by my object 
 in compressing the substance of my letters to you, I 
 am driven to apologise for prolixity, even while I am 
 pondering on the means of presenting, in three or 
 

 47 
 
 four numbered paragraphs, the principal sides and 
 aspects of a subject so large and multilateral as to 
 require a volume for their full exposition. Regard 
 the following, then, as the text. The commentary 
 may be given hereafter: — 
 
 PARAGRAPH THE FIRST. 
 
 The clerisy of the nation (a far apter exponent 
 of the thing meant, than the term which the usus 
 et norma loquendi forces on me), the clerisy, I say, 
 or national church, in its primary acceptation and 
 original intention comprehended the learned of all 
 denominations; — the sages and professors of law and 
 jurisprudence; of medicine and physiology ; of music; 
 of military and civil architecure; of the physical 
 sciences ; with the mathematical as the common 
 organ of the preceding; in short, all the so called 
 liberal arts and sciences, the possession and appli- 
 cation of which constitute the civilization of a coun^ 
 try, as well as the Theological. The last was, 
 indeed, placed at the head of all ; and of good right 
 did it claim the precedence. But why ? Because 
 under the name of Theology, or Divinity, were 
 
48 
 
 contained the interpretation of languages ; the con- 
 servation and tradition of past events; the momen- 
 tous epochs, and revolutions of the race and nation ; 
 the continuation of the records ; logic, ethics, and 
 the determination of ethical science, in application 
 to the rights and duties of men in all their various 
 relations, social and civil ; and lastly, the ground- 
 knowledge, the prima scientia as it was named, — 
 philosophy, or the doctrine and discipline* of ideas. 
 
 * That is, of knowledges immediate, yet real, arid herein dis- 
 tinguished in kind from logical and mathematical truths, which 
 express not realities, but only the necessary forms of conceiving 
 and perceiving, and are therefore named the formal or abstract 
 sciences. Ideas, on the other hand, or the truths of philosophy, 
 properly so called, correspond to substantial beings, to objects 
 whose actual subsistence is implied in their idea, though only by 
 the idea revealable. To adopt the language of the great philoso- 
 phic apostle, they are " spiritual realities that can only spiritually 
 be discerned," and the inherent aptitude and moral preconfigura- 
 tion to which constitutes what we mean by ideas, and by the 
 presence of ideal truth, and of ideal power, in the human being. 
 They, in fact, constitute his humanity. For try to conceive a 
 man without the ideas of God, eternity, freedom, will, absolute 
 truth, of the good, the true, the beautiful, the infinite. An animal 
 endowed with a memory of appearances and of facts might 
 remain. But the man will have vanished, and you have instead 
 a creature, " more subtile than any beast of the field, but likewise 
 cursed above every beast of the field; upon the belly must it go 
 and dust must it eat all the days of its life." But I recal myself 
 from a train of thoughts, little likely to find favour in this age of 
 sense and selfishness. 
 
49 
 
 Theology formed only a part of the objects, the 
 Theologians formed only a portion of the clerks 
 or clergy, of the national church. The theological 
 order had precedency indeed, and deservedly ; but 
 not because its members were priests, whose office 
 was to conciliate the invisible powers and to super- 
 intend the interests that survive the grave ; not 
 as being exclusively, or even principally, sacerdotal 
 or templar, which, when it did occur, is to be con- 
 sidered as an accident of the age, a mis-growth of 
 ignorance and oppression, a falsification of the 
 constitutive principle, not a constituent part of the 
 same. No ! The Theologians took the lead, because 
 the science of Theology was the root and the trunk 
 of the knowledges that civilized man, because it 
 gave unity and the circulating sap of life to all other 
 sciences, by virtue of which alone they could be 
 contemplated as forming, collectively, the living tree 
 of knowledge. It had the precedency, because, 
 under the name theology, were comprised all the 
 main aids, instruments, and materials of national 
 education, the nisus formativus of the body 
 politic, the shaping and informing spirit, which 
 educing, i. e. eliciting, the latent man in all the 
 
50 
 
 natives of the soil, trains them tip to citizens of 
 the country, free subjects of the realm. And 
 lastly, because to divinity belong those fundamental 
 truths, which are the common ground-work of our 
 civil and our religious duties, not less indispensable 
 to a right view of our temporal concerns, than to 
 a rational faith respecting our immortal well-being. 
 (Not without celestial observations, can even ter- 
 restrial charts be accurately constructed.) And 
 of especial importance is it to the objects here 
 contemplated, that only by the vital warmth diffused 
 by these truths throughout the many, and by the 
 guiding light from the philosophy, which is the 
 basis of divinity, possessed by the few, can either 
 the community or its rulers fully comprehend, or 
 rightly appreciate, the permanent distinction, and 
 the occasional contrast, between cultivation and 
 civilization; or be made to understand this most 
 valuable of the lessons taught by history, and 
 exemplified alike in her oldest and her most recent 
 records — that a nation can never be a too cultivated, 
 but may easily become an over-civilized race. 
 
51 
 
 PARAGRAPH THE SECOND. 
 
 As a natural consequence of the full development 
 and expansion of the mercantile and commercial 
 order, which in the earlier epochs of the constitu- 
 tion, only existed, as it were, potentially and in the 
 bud ; the students and possessors of those sciences, 
 and those sorts of learning, the use and necessity of 
 which were indeed constant and perpetual to the 
 nation, but only accidental and occasional to indivi- 
 duals, gradually detached themselves from the na- 
 tionalty and the national clergy, and passed to the 
 order, with the growth and thriving condition of 
 which their emoluments were found to increase in 
 equal proportion. Rather, perhaps, it should be 
 said, that under the common name of professional, 
 the learned in the departments of law, medicine, 
 &c, formed an intermediate link between the estab- 
 lished clergy and the burgesses. 
 
 This circumstance, however, can in no way affect 
 the principle, nor alter the tenure, nor annul the 
 rights of those who remained, and who, as members 
 of the permanent learned class, were planted through- 
 
 e 2 
 
52 
 
 out the realm, each in his appointed place, as the 
 immediate agents and instruments in the great and 
 indispensable work of perpetuating, promoting, and 
 increasing the civilization of the nation, and who 
 thus fulfilling the purposes for which the determinate 
 portion of the total wealth from the land had been 
 reserved, are entitled to remain its trustees, and 
 usufructuary proprietors. But, remember, I do not 
 assert that the proceeds from the nationalty cannot 
 be rightfully vested, except in what we now mean by 
 clergymen, and the established clergy. I have every 
 where implied the contrary. But I do assert, that 
 the nationalty cannot rightfully, and that without 
 foul wrong to the nation it never has been, alienated 
 from its original purposes. I assert that those who, 
 being duly elected and appointed thereto, exercise the 
 functions, and perform the duties, attached to the 
 nationalty — that these collectively possess an una- 
 lienable, indefeasible title to the same — and this by 
 a Jure Divino, to which the thunders from Mount 
 Sinai might give additional authority, but not addi- 
 tional evidence. 
 o 
 Cor/llary to Paragraph II. — During the dark 
 
 times, when the incubus of superstition lay heavy 
 
53 
 
 across the breast of the living and the dying, and 
 when all the familiar " tricksy spirits " in the service 
 of an alien, self-expatriated and anti-national priest- 
 hood were at work in all forms, and in all directions, 
 to aggrandize and enrich a " kingdom of this world," 
 large masses were alienated from the heritable pro- 
 prieties of the realm, and confounded with the 
 Nationalty under the common name of church pro- 
 perty. Had every rood, every pepper-corn, every stone, 
 brick, and beam, been re-transferred, and made 
 heritable, at the Reformation, no right would have 
 been invaded, no principle of justice violated. What 
 the state, by law — that is, by the collective will of 
 its functionaries at any one time assembled — can do 
 or suffer to be done ; that the state, by law, can undo 
 or inhibit. And in principle, such bequests and 
 donations were vitious ab initio, implying in the 
 donor an absolute property in land, unknown to the 
 constitution of the realm, and in defeasance of that 
 immutable reason, which in the name of the nation 
 and the national majesty, proclaims : — " The land 
 is not yours ; it was vested in your lineage in trust 
 for the nation. "And though, in change of times and 
 circumstances, the interest of progression, with the 
 
54 
 
 means and motives for the same — Hope, Industry, 
 Enterprize — may render it the wisdom of the state 
 to facilitate the transfer from line to line, still it 
 must be within the same scale, and with preser- 
 vation of the balance. The most honest of our 
 English historians, and with no superior in industry 
 and research, Mr. Sharon Turner, has labored suc- 
 cessfully in detaching from the portrait of our first 
 Protestant king the layers of soot and blood, with 
 which pseudo- Catholic hate and pseudo-Protestant 
 candour had coated it. But the name of Henry 
 VIII. would outshine that of Alfred, ^and with a 
 splendor, which not even the ominous shadow of his 
 declining life would have eclipsed-r^had he retained 
 the will and possessed the power of effecting, what 
 in part, he promised and proposed to do — if he had 
 availed himself of the wealth, and landed masses that 
 had been unconstitutionally alienated from the state, 
 (i. e. transferred from the scale of heritable lands and 
 revenues, J to purchase and win back whatever had 
 been alienated from the opposite scale of the na- 
 tionalty./ Wrongfully alienated : for it was a pos- 
 session, in which every free subject in the nation has 
 a living interest, a permanent, and likewise a possible 
 
55 
 
 personal and reversionary interest ! Sacrilegiously 
 alienated : for it had been consecrated t| ®e» ot/ce*<», to 
 the potential divinity in every man, which is the 
 ground and condition of his civil existence, that 
 without which a man can be neither free nor obliged, 
 and by which alone, therefore, he is capable of being 
 
 a free subject — a citizeny — a^u>L JZ _^ — . — - 
 
 -~4^having thus righted the balance on both sides, 
 Henry had then directed the nationalty to its true 
 national purposes, (in order to which, however, a 
 different division and sub-division of the kingdom 
 must have superseded the present barbarism, which 
 forms an obstacle to the improvement of the coun- 
 try, of much greater magnitude than men are 
 generally aware of)— if the Nationalty had been 
 distributed in proportionate channels, to the main- 
 tenance, — 1 , Of universities, and the great schools 
 of liberal learning : 2, Of a pastor, presbyter, 
 or parson * in every parish : 3, Of a school-master 
 
 * i. e. Persona kot' etyxfo* persona exemplaris; the repre- 
 sentative and exemplar of the personal character of the commu- 
 nity or parish ; of their duties and rights, of their hopes, privi- 
 leges and requisite qualifications, as moral "persons, and not 
 merely living things. But this the pastoral clergy cannot be 
 other than imperfectly — they cannot be that which it is the 
 
56 
 
 in every parish, who in due time, and under con- 
 dition of a faithful performance of his arduous 
 duties, should succeed to the pastorate ; so that 
 both should be labourers in different compartments 
 of the same field, workmen engaged in different 
 stages of the same process, with such difference of 
 rank, as might be suggested in the names pastor 
 and sub-pastor, or as now exists between curate and 
 rector, deacon and elder. Both alike, I say, mem- 
 bers and ministers of the national clerisy or church, 
 working to - the same end, and determined in the 
 choice of their means and the direction of their 
 labours, by one and the same object — namely, 
 in producing and re-producing, in preserving, con- 
 tinuing, and perfecting, the necessary sources and 
 conditions of national civilization ; this being itself 
 an indispensable condition of national safety, power 
 and welfare, the strongest security and the surest 
 
 paramount end and object of their establishment and distribu- 
 tion throughout the country, that they should be — each in his 
 sphere the germ and nucleus of the progressive civilization — 
 unless they are in the rule married men and heads of families. 
 This, however, is adduced only as an accessary to the great prin- 
 ciple stated in a following page, as an instance of its beneficial 
 consequences, not as the grounds of its validity. 
 
57 
 
 provision, both for the permanence and the progres- 
 sive advance of whatever (laws, institutions, tenures, 
 rights, privileges, freedoms, obligations, &c. &c.) 
 constitute the public weal : these parochial clerks 
 being the great majority of the national clergy, and 
 the comparatively small remainder, being principally* 
 in ordine ad hos, Cleri doctores ut Clerus Populi. 
 I may be allowed to express the final cause of the 
 whole by the office and purpose of the greater part 
 — and this is, to form and train up the people of the 
 country to obedient, free, useful, organizable subjects, 
 citizens, and patriots, living to the benefit of the 
 state, and prepared to die for its defence. The 
 proper object and end of the National Church is 
 civilization with freedom ; and the duty of its mi- 
 nisters, could they be contemplated merely and 
 exclusively as officiaries of the National Church, 
 would be fulfilled in the communication of that degree 
 
 * Considered, I mean, in their national relations, and in that 
 which forms their ordinary, their most conspicuous purpose and 
 utility ; for Heaven forbid, I should deny or forget, that the 
 sciences, and not only the sciences both abstract and experi- 
 mental, but the Literse Humaniores, the products of genial power, 
 of whatever name, have an immediate and positive value, even in 
 their bearings on the national interests. 
 
58 
 
 and kind of knowledge to all, the possession of 
 which is necessary for all in order to their civility. 
 By civility I mean all the qualities essential to 
 a citizen, and devoid of which no people or class 
 of the people can be calculated on by the rulers and 
 leaders of the state for the conservation or promo- 
 tion of its essential interests. 
 
 It follows therefore, that in regard of the 
 grounds and principles of action and conduct, 
 the State has a right to demand of the National 
 Church, that its instructions should be fitted to 
 diffuse throughout the people legality, the obliga- 
 tions of a well- calculated self-interest, enlivened by 
 the affections and the warrantable prejudices of 
 nationality. At least, whatever of higher origin 
 and nobler and wider aim the ministers of the 
 National Church, in some other capacity, and in the 
 performance of other duties, might labour to implant 
 and cultivate in the minds and hearts of their con- 
 gregations and seminaries, should include the prac- 
 tical consequences of the legality above mentioned. 
 The state requires that the basin should be kept full, 
 and that the stream which supplies the hamlet and 
 turns the mill, and waters the meadow-fields, should 
 
59 
 
 be fed and kept flowing. If this be done, the State is 
 content, indifferent for the rest, whether the basin be 
 filled by the spring in its first ascent, and rising but 
 a hand's-breadth above the bed ; or whether drawn 
 from a more elevated source, shooting aloft in a 
 stately column, that reflects the light of heaven from 
 its shaft, and bears the " Iris, Cceli decus, promissum- 
 que Iovis lucidum," on its spray, it fills the basin 
 in its descent. 
 
 In what relation then do you place Christianity to 
 the National Church ? Though unwilling to anticipate 
 what belongs to a part of my subject yet to come, 
 namely, the idea of the Catholic or Christian church, 
 yet I am still more averse to leave this question, 
 even for a moment unanswered. And this is my 
 answer. 
 
 In relation to the National Church, Christianity, 
 or the Church of Christ, is a blessed * accident, a 
 providential boon, a grace of God, a mighty and 
 faithful friend, the envoy indeed and liege subject of 
 
 * Let not the religious reader be offended with this phrase. 
 The writer means only that Christianity is an aid and instrument, 
 which no State or Realm could have produced out of its own 
 elements — which no State had a right to expect. It was, most 
 awfully, a God-send ! 
 
60 
 
 another state, but which can neither administer the 
 laws nor promote the ends of this State, which is 
 not of the world, without advantage, direct and 
 indirect, to the true interests of the States, the ag- 
 gregate of which is what we mean by the world — i.e. 
 the civilized world. (What we ought to mean, at 
 least : for I blush to think, current as the term is 
 among the religious public in consequence of its 
 frequent occurrence in the New Testament, how 
 many discourses I have heard, in which the 
 preacher has made it only too evident that he 
 understood by the term the earth which turns 
 round with us, the- planet Tellus of the astro- 
 nomers !) As the olive tree is said in its growth 
 to fertilize the surrounding soil, and to invigorate 
 the roots of the vines in its immediate neighbour- 
 hood, and improve the strength and flavour of the 
 wines — such is the relation of the Christian and the 
 National Church. But as the olive is not the same 
 plant with the vine, or with the elm or poplar (i. e. the 
 State) with which the vine is wedded ; and as the 
 vine with its prop may exist, though in less perfec- 
 tion, without the olive, or prior to its implantation — 
 even so is Christianity, and a fortiori any particular 
 
61 
 
 scheme of Theology derived and supposed (by its 
 partizans) to be deduced from Christianity, no essen- 
 tial part of the Being of the National Church, 
 however conducive or even indispensable it may be 
 to its well being. - And even so a National Church 
 might exist, and has existed, without, because before 
 the institution of the Christian Church — as the 
 Levitical Church in the Hebrew Constitution, the 
 Druidical in the Celtic, would suffice to prove. 
 But here I earnestly intreat, that two things may 
 be remembered — first, that it is my object to present 
 the Idea of a National Church, as the only safe cri- 
 terion, by which the judgment can decide on the 
 existing state of things ; for when we are in full and 
 clear possession of the ultimate aim of an Institution, 
 it is comparatively easy to ascertain, in what 
 respects this aim has been attained in other ways, 
 arising out of the growth of the Nation, and the 
 gradual and successive expansion of its germs ; in 
 tdiat respects the aim has been frustrated by errors 
 ind diseases in the body politic ; and in what respects 
 the existing institution still answers the original 
 purpose, and continues to be a mean to necessary 
 or most important ends, for which no adequate 
 
62 
 
 substitute can be found. First, I say, let it be 
 borne in mind, that my object has been to present 
 the idea of a National Church, not the history 
 of the Church established in this nation. Secondly, 
 that two distinct functions do not necessarily imply 
 or require two different functionaries. Nay, the 
 perfection of each may require the union of both 
 in the same person. And in the instance now in 
 question, great and grievous errors have arisen 
 from confounding the functions ; and fearfully great 
 and grievous will be the evils from the success 
 of an attempt to separate them — an attempt long 
 and passionately pursued, in many forms, and 
 through many various channels, by a numerous 
 party, that has already the ascendancy in the 
 State ; and which, unless far other minds and far 
 other principles than the opponents of this party 
 have hitherto allied with their cause, are called into 
 action, will obtain the ascendancy in the Nation. 
 
 I have already said, that the subjects, which lie 
 right and left of my road, or even jut into it, are 
 so many and so important, that I offer this epistolary 
 pamphlet but as a catalogue raisonne of texts and 
 theses, that will have answered their purpose if they 
 
63 
 
 excite a certain class of readers to desire or to 
 supply the commentary. But you, Sir! are no 
 stranger to the ways, in which my thoughts 
 travel : and a few jointless sentences will possess 
 you of the chief points that press on my mind — 
 to show "the burden of the valley of vision, 
 even the burden upon the crowned isle, whose 
 merchants are princes, whose traffickers the honour- 
 able of the earth ; who stretcheth out her hand over 
 the sea, and she is the mart of nations !" (Isaiah,* 
 xxiii.) 
 
 The National Church was deemed in the dark age 
 of Queen Elizabeth, in the unenlightened times of 
 Burleigh, Hooker, Spenser, Shakspeare, and Lord 
 Bacon, a great venerable estate of the 
 realm; but now by "all the intellect of the king- 
 dom," it has been determined to be one of the 
 many theological sects, churches or communities, 
 established in the realm ; but distinguished from the 
 rest by having its priesthood endowed, durante bene 
 placito, by favour of the legislature — that is, of 
 the majority for the time being, of the two Houses 
 of Parliament. The Church being thus reduced to 
 a religion, Religion in genere is consequently 
 
64 
 
 separated from the church, and made a subject of 
 parliamentary determination, independent of this 
 church. The poor withdrawn from the discipline of 
 the church. The education of the people detached 
 from the ministry of the church. Religion, a noun of 
 multitude, or nomen collectivum, expressing the ag- 
 gregate of all the different groups of notions and cere- 
 monies connected with the invisible and supernatural. 
 On the plausible (and in this sense of the word, un- 
 answerable) pretext of the multitude and variety of 
 Religions, and for the suppression of bigotry and 
 negative persecution, National Education to be finally 
 sundered from all religion, but speedily and decisively 
 emancipated from the superintendence of the Na- 
 tional Clergy. Education reformed. Defined as 
 syndhimous with Instruction. Axiom of Education 
 so defined. Knowledge being power, those attain- 
 ments, which give a man the power of doing what 
 he wishes to obtain what he desires, are alone to 
 be considered as knowledge, or to be admitted into 
 the scheme of National Education. Subjects to 
 be taught in the National Schools. Reading, 
 writing, arithmetic, the mechanic arts, elements 
 and results of physical science, but to be taught, 
 
65 
 
 as much as possible, empirically. For all know- 
 ledge being derived from the Senses, the closer 
 men are kept to the fountain head, the know- 
 inger they must become. — Popular Ethics, i. e. 
 a Digest of the Criminal Laws, and the evidence 
 requisite for conviction under the same : Lectures 
 on Diet, on Digestion, on Infection, and the 
 nature and effects of a specific virus incidental to 
 and communicable by living bodies in the inter- 
 course of society. N. B. In order to balance the 
 Interests of Individuals and the Interests of the State, 
 the Dietetic and Peptic Text Books, to be under 
 the censorship of the Board of Excise. 
 
 Shall I proceed with my chapter of hints? Game 
 Laws, Corn Laws, Cotton Factories, Spitalfields, 
 the tillers of the land paid by poor-rates, and the 
 remainder of the population mechanized into engines 
 for the manufactory of new rich men — yea, the 
 machinery of the wealth of the nation made up of 
 the wretchedness, disease and . depravity of those 
 who should constitute the strength of the nation! 
 Disease, I say, and vice, while the wheels are in 
 full motion ; but at the first stop the magic wealth- 
 machine is converted into an intolerable weig-ht of 
 
66 
 
 pauperism ! But this partakes of History. The 
 head and neck of the huge Serpent are out of the 
 den : the voluminous train is to come. What 
 next ? May I not whisper as a fear, what Se- 
 nators have promised to demand as a right ? 
 Yes ! the next in my filial bodings is Spoliation. 
 — Spoliation of the nationalty, half thereof 
 to be distributed among the landowners, and the 
 other half among the stockbrokers, and stock - 
 owners, who are to receive it in lieu of the interest 
 formerly due to them. But enough ! I will ask 
 only one question. Has the national welfare, have 
 the wealth and happiness of the people, advanced 
 with the increase of its circumstantial prosperity ? 
 Is the increasing number of wealthy individuals 
 that which ought to be understood by the wealth 
 of the nation ? In answer to this, permit me to 
 annex the following chapter of contents of the moral 
 history of the last 130 years. 
 
 A. Declarative act, respecting certain parts of the 
 constitution, with provisions against further viola- 
 tion of the same, erroneously entitled, "The Re- 
 volution of 1688." 
 
 B. The Mechanico-corpuscular Theory raised to 
 the title of the Mechanic Philosophy, and espoused 
 
- 67 
 
 as a revolution in philosophy, by the actors and 
 partizans of the (so called) Revolution in the state. 
 
 C. Result illustrated, in the remarkable contrast 
 between the acceptation of the word, Idea, before 
 the Restoration, and the present use of the same 
 word. Before 1660, the magnificent son of 
 Cosmo was wont to discourse with Ficino, Po- 
 litian and the princely Mirandula on the Ideas 
 of Will, God, Freedom. Sir Philip Sidney, 
 the star of serenest brilliance in the glorious con- 
 stellation of Elizabeth's court, communed with 
 Spenser, on the Idea of the beautiful; and the 
 younger Algernon — Soldier, Patriot, and States- 
 man — with Harrington, Milton, and Nevil, 
 on the Idea of the State : and in what sense it 
 may be more truly affirmed, that the people {i. e. 
 the component particles of the body politic, at 
 any moment existing as such) are in order to the 
 state, than that the state exists for the sake of 
 the people. 
 
 Present use of the word. 
 
 Dr. Holofernes, in a lecture on metaphysics, de- 
 livered at one of the Mechanics' Institutions, explodes 
 all ideas but those of sensation ; and his friend, 
 
 f2 • 
 
68 
 
 Deputy Costard, has no idea of a better flavored 
 haunch of venison, than he dined off at the London 
 Tavern last week. He admits (for the Deputy has 
 travelled) that the French have an excellent idea of 
 cooking in general ; but holds that their most 
 accomplished Maitres du Cuisine have no more 
 idea of dressing a turtle, than the Parisian Gour- 
 mands themselves have any real idea of the true 
 taste and colour of the fat. 
 
 D. Consequences exemplified. State of nature, 
 or the Ouran Outang theory of the origin of the 
 human race, substituted for the Book of Genesis, 
 ch. I. -X. Rights of nature for the duties and pri- 
 vileges of citizens. Idealess facts, misnamed proofs 
 from history, grounds of experience, &c, substituted 
 for principles and the insight derived from them. 
 State-policy, a Cyclops with one eye, and that in the 
 back of the head ! Our measures of policy, either 
 a series of anachronisms, or a truckling to events sub- 
 stituted for the science/ that should command them : 
 for all true insight is foresight. (Documents. The 
 measures of the British Cabinet from the Boston Port- 
 Bill, March 1774; but particularly from 1789, to 
 the Union of Ireland, and the Peace of Amiens.) 
 Mean time, the true historical feeling, the immortal 
 
69 
 
 life of an historical Nation, generation linked to 
 generation by faith, freedom, heraldry, and ances- 
 tral fame, languishing, and giving place to the su- 
 perstitions of wealth, and newspaper reputation. 
 
 E. Talents without genius: a swarm of clever, 
 well-informed men : an anarchy of minds, a despotism 
 of maxims. Despotism of finance in government 
 and legislation — of vanity and sciolism in the inter- 
 course of life — of presumption, temerity, and hard- 
 ness of heart, in political economy. 
 
 F. The Guess-work of general consequences 
 substituted for moral and political philosophy, 
 adopted as a text book in one of the Universities, 
 and cited, as authority, in the legislature : Plebs 
 pro Senatu Populoque ; the wealth of the nation 
 (i. e. of the wealthy individuals thereof, and the 
 magnitude of the Revenue) for the well-being of 
 the people. 
 
 G. Gin consumed by paupers to the value of 
 about eighteen millions yearly. Government by 
 journeymen clubs ; by saint and sinner societies, 
 committees, institutions ; by reviews, magazines, 
 and above all by newspapers. Lastly, crimes qua- 
 drupled for the whole country, and in some counties 
 decupled. 
 
 
70 
 
 Concluding address to the parliamentary leaders 
 of the Liberalists and Utilitarians. I respect the 
 talents of many, and the motives and character of 
 some among you too sincerely to court the scorn, 
 which I anticipate. But neither shall the fear 
 of it prevent me from declaring aloud, and as a 
 truth which I hold it the disgrace and calamity of a 
 professed statesman not to know and acknowledge, 
 that a permanent, nationalized, learned order, a 
 national clerisy or church, is an essential element 
 of a rightly constituted nation, without which it 
 wants the best security alike for its permanence 
 and its progression ; and for which neither tract 
 societies, nor conventicles, nor Lancastrian schools, 
 nor mechanics' institutions, nor lecture-bazaars 
 under the absurd name of universities, nor all these 
 collectively, cart be a substitute. For they are all 
 marked with the same asterisk of spuriousness, 
 shew the same distemper-spot on the front, that 
 they are empirical specifics for morbid symptoms 
 that help to feed and continue the disease. 
 
 But you wish for general illumination : you 
 would spur-arm the toes of society : you would en- 
 lighten the higher ranks perascensum ab imis. You 
 
 
71 
 
 begin, therefore, with the attempt to popularize sci- 
 ence: but you will only effect its plebification. It is 
 folly to think of making all, or the many, philoso- 
 phers, or even men of science and systematic know- 
 ledge. But it is duty and wisdom to aim at making 
 as many as possible soberly and steadily religious ; 
 — inasmuch as the morality which the state requires 
 in its citizens for its own well-being and ideal im- 
 mortality, /and without reference to their spiritual 
 interest as individuals^) can only exist for the people 
 in the form of religion. But the existence of a 
 true philosophy, or the power and habit of contem- 
 plating particulars in the unity and fontal mirror of 
 the idea — this in the rulers and teachers of a nation 
 is indispensable to a sound state of religion in all 
 classes. In fine, Religion, true or false, is and ever 
 has been the centre of gravity in a realm, to which 
 all other things must and will accommodate them- 
 selves. 
 
 The deep interest which, during the far larger 
 portion of my life since early manhood I have 
 attached to these convictions, has, I perceive, 
 hurried me onwards ' as by the rush from the 
 letting forth of accumulated waters by the sudden 
 
72 
 opening of the sluice gates. It is high time that I 
 should return to my subject. And I have no better 
 way of taking up the thread of my argument, than 
 by re-stating my opinion, that our Eighth Henry 
 would have acted in correspondence to the great 
 principles of our constitution, if having restored 
 the original balance on both sides, he had deter- 
 mined the nationalty to the following objects : 
 1st. To the maintenance of the Universities and 
 the great liberal schools. 2ndly. To the main- 
 tenance of a pastor and schoolmaster in every 
 parish. Srdly. To the raising and keeping in 
 repair of the churches, schools, &c., and, Lastly : 
 To the maintenance of the proper, that is, the in- 
 firm, poor whether from age or sickness : one of the 
 original purposes of the national Reserve being the 
 alleviation of those evils, which in the best forms of 
 worldly states must arise and must have been fore- 
 seen as arising from the institution of individual 
 properties and primogeniture. If these duties were 
 efficiently performed, and these purposes adequately 
 fulfilled, the very increase of the population, (which 
 would, however, by these very means have been 
 prevented from becoming a vicious population) 
 
73 
 
 would have more than counterbalanced those savings 
 in the expenditure of the nationalty occasioned by 
 the detachment of the practitioners of law, medicine, 
 &c, from the national clergy. That this transfer of 
 the national reserve from what had become national 
 evils to its original and inherent purpose of national 
 benefits, instead of the sacrilegious alienation which 
 actually took place — that this was impracticable, is 
 historically true ; but no less true is it philosophically 
 that this impracticability, arising wholly from moral 
 causes — that is, from loose manners and corrupt 
 principles — does not rescue this wholesale sacrilege 
 from deserving the character of the first and dead- 
 liest wound inflicted on the constitution of the 
 kingdom : which term constitution in the body 
 politic, as in bodies natural, expresses not only 
 what has been actually evolved, but likewise 
 whatever is potentially contained in the seminal 
 principle of the particular body, and would in its 
 due time have appeared but for emasculation or 
 disease. Other wounds, by which indeed the con- 
 stitution of the nation has suffered, but which much 
 more immediately concern the constitution of the 
 church, we shall perhaps find another place to 
 mention. 
 
74 
 
 PARAGRAPH THE THIRD. 
 
 The mercantile and commercial class, in which 
 I here comprise all the four classes that I have put 
 in antithesis to the Landed Order, the guardian, 
 and depositary of the Permanence of the Realm, as 
 more characteristically conspiring to the interests 
 of its progression, the improvement and general 
 freedom of the country — this class did, as I have 
 already remarked, in the earlier states of the consti- 
 tution, exist but as in the bud. But during all this 
 period of potential existence, or what we may call 
 the minority of the burgess order, the National 
 Church was the substitute for the most important 
 national benefits resulting from the same. The Na- 
 tional Church presented the only breathing hole of 
 hope. The church alone relaxed the iron fate by 
 which feudal dependency, primogeniture and entail 
 would otherwise have predestined every native of the 
 realm to be lord or vassal. To the Church alone could 
 the nation look for the benefits of existing know- 
 ledge, and for the means of future civilization. 
 Lastly, let it never be forgotten, that under the 
 
75 
 
 fostering wings of the church, the class of free citi- 
 zens and burgers were reared. To the feudal system 
 we owe the forms, to the church the substance, of our 
 liberty. We mention only two of many facts that 
 would form the proof and comment of the above ; 
 first, the origin of towns and cities, in the privileges 
 attached to the vicinity of churches and monasteries, 
 and which preparing an asylum for the fugitive 
 Vassal and oppressed Franklin, thus laid the first 
 foundation of a class of freemen detached from the 
 land. Secondly, the holy war, which the national 
 clergy, in this instance faithful to their national 
 duties, waged against slavery and villenage, and 
 with such success, that in the reign of Charles II., 
 the law which declared every native of the realm free 
 by birth, had merely to sanction an opus jam con- 
 summatum. Our Maker has distinguished man 
 from the brute that perishes, by making hope first 
 an, instinct of his nature ; and secondly, an indis- 
 pensable condition of his moral intellectual pro- 
 gression : 
 
 " For every gift of noble origin, 
 
 Is breathed upon by Hope's perpetual breath." 
 
 WoRDSWOilTII. 
 
76 
 
 But a natural instinct constitutes a right, as far as 
 its gratification is compatible with the equal rights 
 of others. 
 
 PARAGRAPH THE FOURTH. 
 
 Recapitulation of the preceding, in respect of 
 the idea of the National Church. 
 
 Among the primary ends of a State, (in that 
 highest sense of the word, in which it is equivalent 
 to the nation, considered as one body politic, and 
 therefore includes the National Church), there are 
 two, of which the National Church (according to its 
 idea), is the especial and constitutional organ and 
 means. The one is, to secure to the subjects of the 
 realm generally, the hope, the chance, of bettering 
 their own or their children's condition. And though 
 during the last three or four centuries, the National 
 church has found a most powerful surrogate and ally 
 for the effectuation of this great purpose in her former 
 wards and foster-children, i. e. in trade, commerce, 
 free industry, and the arts — yet still the nationalty, 
 under all defalcations, continues to feed the higher 
 ranks by drawing up whatever is worthiest from 
 
77 
 
 below, and thus maintains the principle of Hope 
 in the humblest families, while it secures the pos- 
 sessions of the rich and noble. This is one of the 
 two ends. 
 
 The other is, to develope, in every native of the 
 country, those faculties, and to provide for every 
 native that knowledge and those attainments, which 
 are necessary to qualify him for a member of the state, 
 the free subject of a civilized realm. We do not 
 mean those degrees of moral and intellectual culti- 
 vation which distinguish man from man in the same 
 civilized society, much less those that separate the 
 Christian from the this-worldian ; but those only 
 that constitute the civilized man in contra-distinction 
 from the barbarian, the savage, and the animal. 
 
 I have now brought together all that seemed requi- 
 site to put the intelligent reader in full possession of 
 (what I believe to be) the right Idea of the National 
 Clergy, as an estate of the realm. But I cannot 
 think my task finished without an attempt to rectify 
 the too frequent false feeling on this subject, and to 
 'remove certain vulgar errors, errors, alas ! not con- 
 fined to those whom the world call the vulgar. Ma 
 nel mondo non e se non volgo, says Machiavel. I 
 
78 
 
 shall make no apology therefore, for interposing 
 between the preceding statements, and the practical 
 conclusion from them, the following paragraph, 
 extracted from a work long out of print, and of such 
 very limited circulation that I might have stolen 
 from myself with little risk of detection, had it not 
 been my wish to shew that the convictions expressed 
 in the preceding pages, are not the offspring of the 
 moment, brought forth for the present occasion ; but 
 an expansion of sentiments and principles publicly 
 avowed in the year 1817. 
 
 Among the numerous blessings of the English 
 Constitution, the introduction of an established 
 Church makes an especial claim on the gratitude of 
 scholars and philosophers ; in England, at least, 
 where the principles of Protestantism have con- 
 spired with the freedom of the government to double 
 all its salutary powers by the removal of its abuses. 
 
 That the maxims, of a pure morality, and the 
 sublime truths of the divine unity and attributes, 
 which a Plato found hard to learn, and more diffi- 
 cult to reveal; should have become the almost 
 hereditary property of childhood and poverty, of 
 the hovel and the workshop; that even to the 
 
79 
 
 unlettered they sound as common place ; this is 
 a phenomenon which must withhold all but minds 
 of the most vulgar cast from undervaluing the 
 services even of the pulpit and the reading desk. 
 Yet he who should confine the efficiency of an 
 Established Church to these, can hardly be placed 
 in a much higher rank of intellect. That to every 
 parish throughout the kingdom there is trans- 
 planted a germ of civilization ; that in the re- 
 motest villages there is a nucleus, round which 
 the capabilities of the place may crystallize and 
 brighten ; a model sufficiently superior to excite, 
 yet sufficiently near to encourage and facilitate, imi- 
 tation ; this unobtrusive, continuous agency of a 
 Protestant Church Establishment, this it is, which 
 the patriot, and the philanthropist, who would fain 
 unite the love of peace with the faith in the pro- 
 gressive amelioration of mankind, cannot estimate at 
 too high a price — " It cannot be valued with the gold 
 of Ophir, with the precious onyx, or the sapphire. No 
 mention shall be made of coral or of pearls : for the 
 price of wisdom is above rubies. — The clergyman is 
 with his parishioners and among them ; he is neither in 
 the cloistered cell, nor in the wilderness, but a neigh- 
 
80 
 
 bour and family-man, whose education and rank ad- 
 mit him to the mansion of the rich landholder, while 
 his duties make him the frequent visiter of the farm- 
 house and the cottage. He is, or he may become, 
 connected with the families of his parish or its vici- 
 nity by marriage. And among the instances of the 
 blindness or at best of the short-sightedness, which 
 it is the nature of cupidity to inflict, I know few 
 more striking, than the clamours of the farmers 
 against church property. Whatever was not paid 
 to the clergyman would inevitably at the next lease 
 be paid to the landholder, while, as the case at 
 present stands, the revenues of the church are in 
 some sort the reversionary property of every family 
 that may have a member educated for the church, 
 or a daughter that may marry a clergyman. Instead 
 of being fore closed and immoveable, it is, in fact, the 
 only species of landed property that is essentially 
 moving and circulative. That there exists no in- 
 conveniences, who will pretend to assert ? But I 
 have yet to expect the proof, that the inconveniences 
 are greater in this than in any other species ; or that 
 either the farmers or the clergy would be benefited 
 by forcing the latter to become either trullibers or 
 
81 
 
 salaried placemen. Nay, I do not hesitate to declare 
 my firm persuasion that whatever reason of discon- 
 tent the farmers may assign, the true cause is that 
 they may cheat the Parson but cannot cheat the 
 steward ; and they are disappointed if they should 
 have been able to withhold only two pounds less 
 than the legal claim, having expected to withhold 
 five. 
 
 PRACTICAL CONCLUSION. 
 
 The clerisy, or National Church, being an estate 
 
 of the realm, the Church and State with the king 
 
 as the sovereign head of both constituting the Body 
 
 Politic, the State in the large sense of the word, or 
 
 the Nation dynamically considered (iv dwdpei k«t« 
 
 v 
 nviv^ia, i. e. as an ideal, but not the less actual and 
 
 abiding, unity) ; and in like manner, the Nationalty 
 
 being one of the two constitutional modes or species, 
 
 of which the common wealth of the Nation consists ; 
 
 it follows by immediate consequence, that of the 
 
qualifications for the trusteeship, absolutely to be 
 required of the order collectively, and of every indi- 
 vidual person as the conditions of his admission into 
 this order, and of his eligibility to the usufruct or 
 life-interest of any part or parcel of the Nationalty, 
 the first and most indispensable qualification and 
 pre-condition, that without which all others are null 
 and void, — is that the National Clergy, and every 
 member of the same from the highest to the lowest, 
 shall be fully and exclusively citizens of the State, 
 neither acknowledging the authority, nor within the 
 influence of any other State in the world —full and 
 undistracted subjects of this kingdom, and in no 
 capacity, and under no pretences, owning any other 
 earthly sovereign or visible head but the king, in 
 whom alone the majesty of the nation is appareiit, 
 and by whom alone the unity of the nation in will 
 and in deed is symbolically expressed and imper- 
 sonated. The full extent of this first and absolutely 
 necessary qualification will be best seen in stating 
 the contrary, that is, the absolute disqualifications, 
 the existence of which in any individual, and in any 
 class or order of men, constitutionally incapacitates 
 such individual and class or order from being in- 
 
 
83 
 
 ducted into the National Trust, and this on a prin- 
 ciple so vitally concerning the health and integrity 
 of the body politic, as to render the voluntary 
 transfer of the nationalty, whole or part, direct or 
 indirect, to an order notoriously thus disqualified, a 
 foul treason against the most fundamental rights and 
 interests of the realm, and of all classes of its citi- 
 zens and free subjects, the individuals of the very 
 order itself, as citizens and subjects, not excepted. 
 Now there are two things, and but two, which 
 evidently and predeterminably disqualify for this 
 great trust : the first absolutely, and the second, which 
 in its collective operation, and as an attribute of the 
 whole class, would, of itself, constitute the greatest 
 possible unfitness for the proper ends and purposes 
 of the National Church, as explained and specified 
 in the preceding paragraphs, and the heaviest draw- 
 back from the civilizing influence of the National 
 Clergy in their pastoral and parochial character — the 
 second, I say, by implying the former, becomes 
 likewise an absolute ground of disqualification. It 
 is scarcely necessary to add, what the reader will 
 have anticipated, that the first absolute disqualifi- 
 cation is allegiance to a foreign power : the second* 
 g2 
 
84 
 
 the abjuration— ^nder the command and authority of 
 this power, and as by the rule of their order, its 
 professed Lieges (Alligati)^rof that bond, which more 
 than all other ties connects the citizen with his 
 country ; which beyond all other securities affords 
 the surest pledge to the state for the fealty of its 
 citizens, and that which (when the rule is applied to 
 any body or class of men, under whatever name 
 united, where the number is sufficiently great to 
 neutralize the accidents of individual temperament 
 and circumstances) enables the [State to calculate 
 on their constant adhesion to its interests, and to 
 rely on their faith and singleness of heart in the due 
 execution of whatever public or national trust might 
 be assigned to them. But we shall, perhaps, ex- 
 press the nature of this security more adequately 
 by the negative. The Marriage Tie is a Bond the 
 preclusion of which by an antecedent obligation, 
 that overrules the accidents of individual character 
 and is common to the whole order, deprives the State 
 of a security with which it cannot dispense. I will 
 not say,£jthough I might shelter the position under 
 the authority of the great Publicists and State- 
 Lawyers of the Augustan Age, who, in the Lex 
 
85 
 
 Julia Papia, enforced anew a principle common to 
 the old Roman Constitution with that of Sparta^] 
 that it is a security which the State may rightfully 
 demand of all its adult citizens, competently cir- 
 cumstanced, by positive enactment. But without 
 the least fear of confutation, though in the full fore- 
 sight of vehement contradiction, I do assert, that 
 the State may rightfully demand- of any number of 
 its subjects united in one body or order the absence 
 of all customs, initiative vows, covenants and by- 
 laws in that order, precluding the members of the 
 said body collectively and individually from afford- 
 ing this security. In strictness of principle, I might 
 here conclude the sentence — though as it now stands 
 it would involve the assertion of a right in the state 
 to suppress any order confederated under laws so 
 anti-civic. But I am no friend to any rights that 
 can be disjoined from the duty of enforcing them, 
 I therefore at once confine and complete the sen- 
 tence thus : — The State not only possesses the right, 
 but is in duty bound to demand the above as a 
 necessary condition of its entrusting to any order of 
 men, and to any individual as a member of a known 
 order, the titles, functions, and investments of the 
 
86 
 
 National Church. But if any doubt could attach 
 to the proposition, ^whether thus stated, or in the 
 perfectly equivalent Converse, i. e. that the exist- 
 ence and known enforcement of the injunction or 
 prohibitory by-law, before described, in any Order 
 or Incorporation constitutes an a priori disquali- 
 fication for the Trusteeship of the Nationalty, and 
 an insuperable obstacle to the establishment of 
 such an order, or of any members of the same as 
 a National Clergy^-such doubt would be removed, 
 as soon as the fact of this injunction, or vow ex- 
 acted and given, or whatever else it may be, by 
 which the members of the Order, collectively and 
 as such, incapacitate themselves from affording this 
 security for their full, faithful, and unbiassed ap- 
 plication of a National Trust to its proper and 
 national purposes, is formed in conjunction with, 
 and aggravated by, the three following circum- 
 stances. First, that this incapacitation originates 
 in, and forms part of, the allegiance of the order 
 to a foreign Sovereignty : Secondly, that it is 
 notorious, that the Canon or Prescript on which it 
 is grounded, was first enforced qn the secular 
 clergy universally, after long and obstinate reluc- 
 

 87 
 
 tation on their side, and on that of their natural 
 sovereigns on the several realms, to which as sub- 
 jects they belonged ; and that it is still retained in 
 force, and its revocation inflexibly refused, as the 
 direct and only adequate means of supporting that 
 usurped and foreign Sovereignty, and of securing 
 by virtue of the expatriating and insulating effect 
 of its operation, the devotion, and allegiance of the 
 order * to their visible Head, and Sovereign. And 
 thirdly, that the operation of the interdict precludes 
 one of the most constant and influencive ways and 
 means of promoting the great paramount end of a 
 National Church, the progressive civilization of the 
 community. Emollit mores nee sinit esse feros. 
 
 And now let me conclude these preparatory No- 
 tices by compressing the sum and substance of 
 
 * For the fullest and ablest exposition of this point, I refer 
 to the Reverend Blanco White's " Practical and Internal Evi- 
 dence," and to that admirable work, ( i Reforma d'ltalia," writ- 
 ten by a professed and apparently sincere Catholic, a work 
 which well merits translation. I know no work so well fitted to 
 soften the prejudices against the theoretical doctrines of the 
 Latin Church, and to deepen our reprobation of what it actually 
 and practically is, in all countries where the expediency of 
 keeping up appearances, as in Protestant neighbourhoods, does 
 not operate. 
 
my argument into this one sentence. Though 
 many things may detract from the comparative 
 fitness of individuals, or of particular classes, for 
 the Trust and Functions of the Nation a lty, 
 there are only two absolute Disqualifications : and 
 these are, Allegiance to a Foreign Power, or the 
 Acknowledgement of any other visible Head of 
 the Church, but our Sovereign Lord the King: 
 and compulsory celibacy in connection with, and 
 in dependence on, a foreign and extra-national 
 head. 
 
 ON THE KING AND THE NATION. 
 
 A treatise? why, the subjects might, I own, 
 excite some apprehension of the sort. But it will 
 be found like sundry Greek Treatises among the 
 tinder- rolls of Herculaneum, with titles of as large 
 promise, somewhat largely and irregularly abbre- 
 viated in the process of unrolling. In fact, neither 
 my purpose nor my limits permit more than a few 
 hints, that may prepare the reader for some of the 
 positions assumed in the second part of this volume. 
 
89 
 
 Of the King with the two Houses of Parliament, 
 
 as constituting the State (in the special and 
 
 antithetic sense of the word) we have already 
 
 spoken : and it remains only to determine the 
 
 proper and legitimate objects of its superintendence 
 
 and control. On what is the power of the State 
 
 rightfully exercised? Now, I am not arguing in 
 
 a court of law ; and my purpose would be grievously 
 
 misunderstood if what I say should be taken as 
 
 intended for an assertion of the fact. Neither of 
 
 
 facts, nor of statutory and demandable rights do I 
 
 speak ; but exclusively of the State according to 
 the idea. And, in accordance with the idea of the 
 State, I do not hesitate to answer, that the legi- 
 timate objects of its power comprise all the in- 
 terests and concerns of the Proprietage, both 
 landed and personal, and whether inheritably vested 
 in the lineage or in the individual citizen ; and 
 these alone. Even in the lives and limbs of the 
 lieges, the King, as the head and arm of the State, 
 has an interest of property : and in any trespass 
 against them the King appears as plaintiff. 
 
 The chief object, for which men, who from the 
 beginning existed under a social bond, first formed 
 
90 
 
 themselves into a State, and on the social super- 
 fy%^ induced the political relation, was not the protection 
 of their lives but of their property. The natural 
 man is too proud an animal to admit that he needs 
 any other protection for his life than his own courage 
 and that of his clan can bestow. Where the nature 
 of the soil and climate has precluded all property 
 but personal, and admitted that only in its simplest 
 forms, as in Greenland for instance — there men 
 remain in the domestic state and form neighbour- 
 hoods, not governments. And in North America, 
 the chiefs appear to exercise government in those 
 tribes only which possess individual landed property. 
 Among the rest the chief is tire general, a leader 
 in war; not a magistrate. To property and to its 
 necessary inequalities must be referred all human 
 laws, that would not be laws without and inde- 
 pendent of any conventional enactment : i. e. all 
 State-legislation. — Friend, vol. i. 351. 
 
 Next comes the King, as the Head of the Na- 
 tional Church, or Clerisy, and the Protector and 
 Supreme Trustee of the Nationalty : the power 
 of the same in relation to its proper objects being- 
 exercised by the King and the Houses of Convoca- 
 
91 
 
 tion, of which, as before of the State, the King is 
 the head and arm. And here, if it had been my 
 purpose to enter at once on the development of 5 this 
 position, together with the conclusions to be drawn 
 from it, I should need with increased earnestness 
 remind the reader, that I am neither describing 
 what the National Church now is, nor determining 
 what it ought to be. My statements respect the 
 idea alone, as deduced from its original purpose and 
 ultimate aim : and of the idea only must my asser- 
 tions be understood. But the full exposition of this 
 point is not necessary for the appreciation of the 
 late Bill which is the subject of the following part of 
 the volume. It belongs indeed to the chapter with 
 which I had intended, and should my health permit 
 it, still intend to conclude this volume — namely, my 
 humble contribution towards an answer to the 
 question, What is to be done now ? For the present, 
 therefore, it will be sufficient, if I recal to the reader's 
 recollection, that formerly the National Clerisy, in 
 the two Houses of Convocation duly assembled and 
 represented, taxed themselves. But as to the proper 
 objects, on which the authority of the convocation 
 with the King as its head was to be exercised — these 
 the reader will himself without difficulty decypherby 
 
92 
 
 referring to what has been already said respecting 
 the proper and distinguishing ends and purposes 
 of a National Church, 
 
 I pass, therefore, at once to the relations of the 
 Nation, or the State in the larger sense of the 
 word, to the State specially so named, and to the 
 Crown. And on this subject again I shall confine 
 myself to a few important yet, I trust, not common 
 nor obvious, remarks respecting the conditions 
 requisite or especially favorable to the health and 
 vigor of a realm. From these again I separate 
 those, the nature and importance of which cannot 
 be adequately exhibited but by adverting to the 
 consequences which have followed their neglect or 
 inobservance, reserving them for another place : 
 l.J^- while for the present occasion I select two only; 
 
 /of 
 
 but these, I dare believe, not unworthy the name of 
 Political Principles, or Maxims, i. e. regulae quae 
 inter maximas numerari merentur. And both of 
 them forcibly confirm and exemplify a remark, 
 often and in various ways suggested to my mind, 
 that with, perhaps, one # exception, it would be 
 
 * That namely of the Word (Gusp. of John, I. 1.) for the 
 Divine Alterity ; the Deus Alter et idem of Philo ; Deltas 
 Objectiva. 
 
93 
 
 difficult, in the whole compass of language, to find 
 a metaphor so commensurate, so pregnant, or sug- 
 gesting so many points of elucidation, as that of 
 Body Politic, as the exponent of a State or Realm. 
 I admire, as little as you do, the many-jointed 
 similitudes of Fleming, and other finders of moral 
 and spiritual meanings in the works of Art and 
 Nature, where the proportion of the likeness to the 
 difference, not seldom reminds us of the celebrated 
 comparison of the Morning Twilight to a Boiled 
 Lobster. But the correspondence between the Body 
 Politic to the Body Natural holds even in the 
 detail of application. Let it not, however, be sup- 
 posed, that I expect to derive any proof of my 
 positions from this analogy. My object in thus 
 prefacing them is answered, if I have shown cause 
 for the use of the physiological terms by which 
 I have sought to render my meaning intelligible. 
 
 The first condition then required, in order to a /• 
 sound constitution of the Body Politic, is a due 
 proportion of the free and permeative life and energy 
 of the Nation to the organized powers brought 
 within containing channels. What those vital forces 
 that seem to bear an analogy to the imponderable 
 
94 
 
 agents, magnetic or galvanic, in bodies inorganic, 
 if indeed they are not the same in a higher energy 
 and under a different law of action — what these, 
 I say, are in the living body in distinction from 
 the fluids in the glands and vessels — the same, or 
 at least a like relation, do the indeterminable, but 
 yet actual influences of intellect, information, pre- 
 vailing principles and tendencies, with the influ- 
 ence of property, or income, where it exists without 
 right of suffrage attached thereto, hold to the 
 regular, definite, and legally recognised Powers, 
 in the Body Politic. But as no simile runs on 
 all four legs, {nihil simile est idem), so here, the 
 difference in respect of the Body Politic is, that in 
 sundry instances the former species of force is 
 capable of being converted into the latter, of being 
 as it were organised and rendered a part of the 
 vascular system, by attaching a measured and de- 
 terminate political right, or privilege, thereto. 
 
 What the exact proportion, however, of the two 
 kinds of Force should be, it is impossible to pre- 
 determine. But the existence of a disproportion is 
 sure to be detected, sooner or later, by the effects. 
 Thus: the ancient Greek democracies, the hot-beds 
 
95 
 
 of Art, Science, Genius, and Civilization, fell 
 into dissolution from the excess of the former, 
 the permeative power deranging the functions, and 
 by explosions shattering the organic structures, they 
 should have enlivened. On the contrary, the Re- 
 public of Venice fell by the contrary extremes. All 
 political power was confined to the determinate ves- 
 sels, and these becoming more and more rigid, even 
 to an ossification of the arteries, the State, in which 
 the people were nothing, lost all power of resistance 
 ad extra. 
 
 Under this head, in short, there are three possible 
 sorts of malformation to be noticed, namely ,— The ^ 
 adjunction or concession of direct political power 
 to personal force and influence, whether physical or 
 intellectual, existing in classes or aggregates of 
 individuals, without those fixed or tangible posses- 
 sions, freehold, copyhold, or leasehold, in land, 
 house, or stock. The power resulting from the ac- 
 quisition of knowledge or skill, and from the superior 
 development of the understanding is, doubtless, of 
 a far nobler kind than mere physical strength and 
 fierceness, the one being peculiar to the animal 
 Man, the other common to him with the Bear, the 
 
96 
 
 Buffalo, and the Mastiff. And if superior Talents, 
 and the mere possession of knowledges, such as 
 can be learnt at Mechanics' Institutions, were 
 regularly accompanied with a Will in harmony 
 with the Reason, and a consequent subordination 
 of the appetites and passions to the ultimate ends 
 of our Being : if intellectual gifts and attainments 
 were infallible signs of wisdom and goodness in the 
 same proportion, and the knowing, clever, and 
 talented (a vile word!) were always rational; if 
 the mere facts of science conferred or superseded 
 the soft'ning humanizing influences of the moral 
 world, that habitual presence of the beautiful or 
 the seemly, and that exemption from all familiarity 
 with the gross, the mean, and the disorderly, 
 whether in look or language, or in the surrounding 
 objects, in which the main efficacy of a liberal 
 education consists ; and if, lastly, these acquire- 
 ments and powers of the understanding could be 
 shared equally by the whole class, and did not, as 
 by a necessity of nature they ever must do, fall to 
 the lot of two or three in each several group, 
 club, or neighbourhood ; — then, indeed, by an en- 
 largement of the Chinese system, political power 
 
97 
 
 might not unwisely be conferred as the honorarium 
 or privilege on having passed through all the forms 
 in the National Schools, without the security of 
 political ties, without those fastenings and radical 
 fibres of a collective and registrable property, by 
 which the Citizen inheres in and belongs to the Com- 
 monwealth, as a constituent part either of the Pro- 
 prietage, or of the Nationalty ; either of the State, or 
 of the National Church. But as the contrary of all 
 these suppositions may be more safely assumed, the 
 practical conclusion will be — not that the requisite 
 means of intellectual developement and growth 
 should be withheld from any native of the soil, 
 which it was at all times wicked to wish, and 
 which it would be now silly to attempt ; but — that 
 the gifts of the understanding, whether the boon 
 of a genial nature, or the reward of more persistent 
 application, should be allowed fair play in the ac- 
 quiring of that proprietorship, to which a certain por- 
 tion of political power belongs, as its proper function. 
 For in this way there is at least a strong probability, 
 that intellectual power will be armed with political 
 power, only where it has previously been combined 
 with and guarded by the moral qualities of pru- 
 
98 
 
 dence, industry, and self-control. And this is 
 the first of the three kinds of mal-organization in 
 a state. 
 
 \g} The second is : the exclusion of any class or 
 numerous body of individuals, who have notoriously 
 risen into possession, and the influence inevitably 
 connected with known possession, under pretence 
 of impediments that do not directly or essentially 
 affect the character of the individuals as citizens, 
 or absolutely disqualify them for the performance 
 of civic duties. Imperfect, yet oppressive, and 
 irritating ligatures that peril the trunk, whose cir- 
 culating current they would withhold, even more 
 than the limb which they would fain excommuni- 
 cate ! 
 
 y*_ The third and last is : a gross incorrespondency 
 of the proportion of the antagonist interests of the 
 Body Politic in the representative body — i. e. (in re- 
 lation to our own country,) in the two Houses of 
 Parliament — to the actual proportion of the same 
 interests, and of the public influence exerted by the 
 same in the Nation at large. Whether in conse- 
 quence of the gradual revolution which has trans- 
 ferred to the Magnates of the Landed Interest so 
 
99 
 large a portion of that Borough Representation 
 which was to have been its counterbalance j whether 
 the same causes which have deranged the equili- 
 
 ■ey 
 
 brium of the Landed and the * Mon/ed Interests in 
 
 * Moneyed, used arbitrarily, as in preceding pages the words, 
 Personal and Independent, from my inability to find any one self- 
 interpreting word, that would serve for the generic name of the 
 four classes, on which I have stated the Interest of Progression 
 more especially to depend, and with it the Freedom which is 
 the indispensable condition and propelling force of all national 
 progress: even as the Counter-pole, the other great Interest 
 of the Body Politic, its Permanency, is more especially com- 
 mitted to the Landed Order, as its natural Guardian and De- 
 positary. I have therefore had recourse to the convenient 
 figure of speech, by which a conspicuous part or feature of a 
 subject is used to express the whole ; and the reader will be 
 so good as to understand, that the Moneyed Order in this place 
 comprehends and stands for, the Commercial, Manufacturing, 
 Distributive, and Professional classes of the Community. 
 
 Only a few days ago, an accident placed in my hand a work, 
 of which, from my very limited opportunities of seeing new 
 publications I had never before heard. Mr. Crawfurd's His- 
 tory of the Indian Archipelago — the work of a wise as well as 
 of an able and well-informed man ! Need I add, that it was 
 no ordinary gratification to find, that in respect of certain pro- 
 minent positions, maintained in this volume, I had unconsciously 
 been fighting behind the shield of one whom I deem it an 
 honour to follow. But the sheets containing the passages, having 
 been printed off, I avail myself of this note, to insert the sentences 
 from Mr. Crawfurd's History, rather than lose the confirmation 
 which a coincidence with so high an authority has produced on 
 my own mind, and the additional weight which my sentiments, 
 
 h2 
 
100 
 
 the Legislation, have not likewise deranged the 
 balance between the two unequal divisions of the 
 Landed Interest itself, viz., the Major Barons, or 
 great Land-owners, with or without title, and the 
 great body of the Agricultural Community, and 
 
 will receive, in the judgment of others. The first of the two 
 Extracts the reader will consider as annexed to pp. 20 — 22 of 
 this volume; the second to the paragraph on the protection of 
 property, as the end chiefly proposed in the formation of a fixed 
 government, quoted from a work of my own, (viz. The Friend), 
 published ten or eleven years before the appearance of Mr. Craw- 
 ford's History, which I notice in the work to give the principle 
 in question that probability of its being grounded in fact, which 
 is derived from the agreement of two independent minds. The 
 first extract, Mr. Crawfurd introduces by the remark, that the 
 possession of wealth, derived from a fertile soil, encouraged the 
 progress of absolute power in Java. He then proceeds — 
 
 Extract I. 
 
 The devotion of a people to agricultural industry, by rendering 
 
 themselves more tame, and their property more tangible, went 
 
 still farther towards if: for wherever Agriculture is the principal 
 
 pursuit, there it may certainly be reckoned, that the People will 
 
 ji.Jf,'2- i - be found living under an absolute government. 
 
 History of the Indian Archipelago : vol. iii p. 24. 
 
 Extract II. 
 
 In cases of murder, no distinction is made (i. e. in the Ancient 
 Laws of the Indian Islanders), between wilful murder and chance 
 medley. It is the Loss, which the family or tribe sustains, that 
 is considered, and the pecuniary compensation was calculated to 
 make up that loss. Ditto, Ditto, p. 123. 
 
101 
 
 thus giving to the real or imagined interests of the 
 comparatively few, the imposing name of the In- 
 terest of the whole — the Landed Interest! — these 
 are questions, to which the obdurate adherence to 
 the jail-crowding Game Laws, (which during the 
 reading of our Church Litany, I have sometimes 
 been tempted to include, by a sort of sub intellige, 
 in the petitions — "from envy, hatred, and malice, 
 and all uncharitableness ; from battle, murder, and 
 sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us ! ") to which 
 the Corn Laws, the exclusion of the produce of our 
 own colonies from our distilleries, &,c, during the war, 
 against the earnest recommendation of the govern- 
 ment, the retention of the Statutes against Usury, 
 and other points, of minor importance or of less 
 safe handling, may seem at a first view to suggest 
 an answer in the affirmative ; but which, for reasons 
 before assigned I shall leave unresolved, content 
 if only I have made the Principle itself intelligible. 
 The following anecdote, for I have no means of 
 ascertaining its truth, and no warrant to offer for 
 its accuracy, I give not as a fact in proof of an 
 overbalance of the Landed Interest, but as an in- 
 distinctly remembered hearsay, in elucidation of 
 
102 
 
 what is meant by the words. Some eighteen or 
 twenty years ago — for so long I think it must have 
 been, since the circumstance was first related to 
 me — my illustrious (alas! I must add, I fear, my 
 late) friend, Sir Humphrey Davy, at Sir Joseph 
 Banks's request, analysed a portion of an East 
 Indian import, known by the names of cutch, 
 and Terra Japonica; but which he ascertained to 
 be a vegetable extract, consisting almost wholly of 
 pure tannin : and further trials, with less pure speci- 
 mens, still led to the conclusion, that the average 
 product would be seven parts in ten of the tanning 
 principle. This discovery was *communicated to 
 
 * And, (if I recollect right, though it was not from him, that I 
 received the anecdote) by a friend of Sir Humphrey's, whom I 
 am proud to think my friend likewise, and by an elder claim. — 
 A man whom I have seen now in his harvest-field, or the market, 
 now in a committee-room, with the Rickmans and Ricardos of 
 the age j at another time with Davy, Woolaston, and the Wedge- 
 woods; now with Wordsworth, Southey, and other friends not 
 unheard of in the republic of letters ; now in the drawing-rooms 
 of the rich and the noble, and now presiding at the annual 
 dinner of a Village Benefit Society ; and in each seeming to be 
 in the very place he was intended for, and taking the part to 
 which his tastes, talents, and attainments, gave him an admitted 
 right. And yet this is not the most remarkable, not th« indivi- 
 dualising trait of our friend's character. It is almost overlooked 
 in the originality and raciness of his intellect; in the life, fresh- 
 
103 
 
 the trade ; and on inquiry made at the India House, 
 it was found that this cutch could be prepared in 
 large quantities, and imported at a price which, 
 after an ample profit to the importers, it would very 
 well answer the purposes of the tanners to give. 
 The trade itself, too, was likely to be greatly be- 
 nefitted and enlarged, and by being rendered less 
 dependant on a particular situation, and by the 
 reduction of the price at which it could be offered 
 to the foreign consumer, which, in conjunction with 
 the universally admitted superiority of the English 
 leather might be reasonably calculated on as en- 
 abling us to undersell our foreign rivals in their own 
 
 ness, and practical value of his remarks and notices, truths 
 plucked as they are growing, and delivered to you with the dew 
 on them, the fair earnings of an observing eye, armed and kept 
 on the watch by thought and meditation ; and above all, in the 
 integrity, i. e. entireness of his being, (integrum et sine cerd vas), 
 the steadiness of his attachments, and the activity and persis- 
 tency of a benevolence, which so graciously presses a warm temper 
 *nto the service of a yet warmer heart, and so lights up the little 
 flaws and imperfections, incident to humanity in its choicest 
 specimens, that were their removal at the option of his friends, 
 (and few have, or deserve to have so many ! ) not a man among 
 them but would vote for leaving him as he is. 
 
 This is a note digressive; but, as the heighth of the offence is, 
 that the Garnish is too good for the Dish, I shall confine my 
 
 apology to a confession of the fault. 
 
 S. T. C. 
 
104 
 
 markets. Accordingly, an offer was made, on the 
 part of the principal persons interested in the leather 
 trade, to purchase, at any price below the sum that 
 had been stated to them as the highest, or extreme 
 price, as large a quantity as it was probable that 
 the Company would find it feasible or convenient 
 to import in the first instance. Well ! the ships 
 went out, and the ships returned, again and again : 
 and no increase in the amount of the said desideratum 
 appearing among the imports, enough only being im- 
 ported to meet the former demand of the druggists, 
 and (it is whispered) of certain ingenious transmuters 
 of Bohea into Hyson — my memory does not enable 
 me to determine whether the inquiry into the occasion 
 of this disappointment was made, or whether it was 
 anticipated, by a discovery that it would be useless. 
 But it was generally understood, that the Tanners 
 had not been the only persons, whose attention had 
 been drawn to the qualities of the article, and the 
 consequences of its importation ; and that a very 
 intelligible hint had been given to persons of known 
 influence in Leadenhall-street, that in case of any 
 such importation being allowed, the East-India Com- 
 pany must not expect any support from the Landed 
 
 
105 
 
 Interest in parliament, at the next renewal, or motion 
 for the renewal of their Charter. The East India 
 Company might reduce the price of Bark, one 
 half, or more : and the British Navy, and the grand- 
 sons of our present Senators, might thank them for 
 thousands, and myriads of noble oaks, left unstript 
 in consequence — this may be true ; but no less 
 true is it, that the Free Merchants would soon re- 
 duce the price of good Tea, in the same proportion, 
 and monopolists ought to have a feeling for each 
 other. 
 
 So much, in explanation of the first of the two ^ 
 Conditions of the health and vigour of a Body 
 Politic : and far more, I must confess, than I had 
 myself reckoned on. I will endeavour to indemnify 
 the reader, by despatching the second in a few 
 sentences; which could not so easily have been 
 accomplished, but for the explanations given in 
 the preceding paragraphs. For as we have found 
 the first condition on the due proportion of the free 
 and permeative Life of the State to the Powers 
 organized, and severally determined by their ap- 
 propriate, and containing, or conducting nerves, or 
 vessels ; the Second Condition is — 
 
106 
 
 A due proportion of the potential (latent, dormant) 
 to the actual Power. In the former, both Powers 
 alike are awake and in act. The Balance is pro- 
 duced by the polarization of the Actual Power, i. e. 
 the opposition of the Actual Power organized, to 
 the Actual Power, free and permeating the Organs. 
 In the Second, the Actual Power, in toto, is opposed 
 to the Potential. It has been frequently and truly 
 observed, that in England, where the ground plan, 
 the skeleton, as it were, of the government is a 
 monarchy, at once buttressed and limited by the 
 Aristocracy, (the assertions of its popular character 
 finding a better support in the harangues of or 
 theories of popular men, than in state-documents 
 and the records of clear History), a far greater de- 
 gree of liberty is, and long has been enjoyed, than 
 ever existed in the ostensibly freest, that is, most 
 democratic Commonwealths of ancient or of modern 
 times — greater, indeed, and with a more decisive 
 predominance of the Spirit of Freedom, than the 
 wisest and most philanthropic statesmen of anti- 
 quity, or than the great Commonwealth 's-men, the 
 stars of that narrow interspace of blue sky between 
 the black clouds of the first and second Charles's 
 
107 
 
 reigns, believed compatible, the one with the safety 
 of the State, the other with the interests of Morality. 
 Yes! for little less than a century and a half 
 Englishmen have collectively, and individually, lived 
 and acted with fewer restraints on their free-agency, 
 than the citizens of any known # Republic, past 
 or present. The fact is certain. It has been often 
 boasted of, but never, I think, clearly explained. 
 The solution of the phenomenon must, it is ob- 
 vious, be sought for in the combination of circum- 
 stances, to which we owe the insular privilege of 
 a self-evolving Constitution : and the following will, 
 I think, be found the main cause of the fact in 
 question. Extremes meet — an adage of inexhaus- 
 tible exemplification A democratic Republic and 
 an Absolute Monarchy agree in this ; that in both 
 alike, the Nation, or People, delegates its whole 
 power. Nothing is left obscure, nothing suffered to 
 
 * It will be thought, perhaps, that the United States of North 
 America, should have been excepted. But the identity of Stock, 
 Language, Customs, Manners and Laws scarcely allows us to 
 consider this an exception : even tho' it were quite certain both 
 that it is and that it will continue such. It was, at all events, a 
 remark worth remembering, which I once heard from a Traveller 
 (a prejudiced one, I must admit) that where every man may 
 take liberties, there is little Liberty for any man. 
 
108 
 
 remain in the Idea, unevolved and only acknow- 
 ledged as an existing, yet indeterminable Right. 
 A Constitution such states can scarcely be said 
 to possess. The whole Will of the Body Politic 
 is in act at every moment. But in the Constitution 
 of England according to the Idea (which in this 
 instance has demonstrated its actuality by its prac- 
 tical influence, and this too though counter-worked 
 by fashionable errors and maxims, that left their 
 validity behind in the Law-courts, from which they 
 were borrowed) the Nation has delegated its power, 
 not without measure and circumscription, whether .. 
 in respect of the duration of the Trust, or of the 
 particular interests entrusted. The Omnipotence of 
 Parliament, in the mouth of a lawyer, and under- 
 stood exclusively of the restraints and remedies 
 within the competence of our Law-courts, is ob- 
 jectionable only as bombast. It is but a puffing 
 pompous way of stating a plain matter of fact. Yet 
 in the times preceding the Restoration, even this 
 was not universally admitted . And it is not without 
 a fair show of reason, that the shrewd and learned 
 author of "The Royalists' Defence;" printed 
 in the year, 1648, (a tract of 172 pages, small 
 
109 
 
 quarto, from which I now transcribe) thus sums up 
 his argument and evidences : 
 
 " Upon the whole matter clear it is, the Parliament 
 itself (that is, the King, the Lords, and Commons) 
 although unanimously consenting, are not boundless : 
 the Judges of the realm by the fundamental Law of 
 England have power to determine which Acts of 
 Parliament are binding and which void." p. 48. — 
 That a unanimous declaration of the Judges of the 
 realm, that any given Act of Parliament was against 
 right reason and the fundamental law of the land 
 (*. e. the Constitution of the realm), render such Act 
 null and void, was a principle that did not want 
 defenders among the lawyers of elder times. And 
 in a state of society in which the competently in- 
 formed and influencive members of the community, 
 (the National Clerisy not included), scarcely perhaps 
 trebled the number of the members of the two 
 Houses, and Parliaments were so often tumultuary 
 congresses of a victorious party rather than repre- 
 sentatives of the State, the Right and Power here 
 asserted might have been wisely vested in the Judges 
 of the realm : and with at least equal wisdom, under 
 change of circumstances, has the right been suffered 
 
110 
 
 to fall into abeyance. Therefore let the potency of 
 Parliament be that highest and uttermost, beyond 
 which a court of Law looketh not : and within the 
 sphere of the Courts quicquid Rex cum Parliamento 
 voluit, Fatum sit ! 
 
 But if the strutting phrase be taken, as from 
 sundry recent speeches respecting the fundamental 
 institutions of the realm, it may be reasonably in- 
 ferred that it has been taken, i. e. absolutely, and in 
 reference to the Nation, to England with all her 
 venerable heir-looms, and with all her germs of rever- 
 sionary wealth — thus used and understood, the Om- 
 nipotence of Parliament is an hyperbole, that would 
 contain mischief in it, were it only that it tends to 
 provoke a detailed analysis of the materials of the 
 joint-stock company, to which so terrific an attri- 
 bute belongs, and the competence of the share- 
 holders in this earthly omnipotence to exercise the 
 same. And on this head the observations and de- 
 scriptive statements given in Chap. v. of the old 
 tract, just cited, retain all their force; or if any 
 have fallen off, their place has been abundantly 
 filled up by new growths. 1'he degree and sort of 
 knowledge, talent, probity and prescience,'* which 
 
Ill 
 
 even when exerted within the sphere and circum- 
 scription of the constitution, and on the matters 
 properly and peculiarly appertaining to the State 
 according to the idea (i. e., the interests of the pro- 
 prietage of the realm, and (though not directly or 
 formally, yet actually), the interests of the realm in 
 its foreign relations, as affecting the weal, and re- 
 quiring the aid of the proprietors), it would be only 
 too easy, were it not too invidious, to prove from 
 acts and measures presented by the history of the 
 last half century, are but scant measure — placed by 
 the side of the plusquam-gigantic height and am- 
 plitude of power, implied in the unqualified use of 
 the phrase, Omnipotence of Parliament, and with 
 its dwarfdom exaggerated by the contrast, would 
 threaten to distort the countenance of truth itself 
 with the sardonic laugh of irony.* 
 
 * I have not in my possession the morning paper in which I 
 read it, or I should with great pleasure transcribe an admirable 
 passage from the present King of Sweden's Address to the 
 Storthing, i. e. Parliament of Norway, on the necessary limits 
 of Parliamentary Power, consistently with the existence of a 
 Constitution. But I can with confidence refer the reader to 
 the speech, as worthy of an Alfred. Every thing indeed, that I 
 have heard or read of this sovereign, has contributed to the 
 impression on my mind, that he is a good and wise man, and 
 worthy to be the king of a virtuous people, the purest specimen 
 of the Gothic race. 
 
112 
 
 The non-resistance of successive generations has 
 ever been, and with evident reason, deemed equi- 
 valent to a tacit consent, on the part of a nation, 
 and as finally legitimating the act thus acquiesced 
 in, however great the dereliction of principle, and 
 breach of trust, the original enactment may have 
 been. I hope, therefore, that without offence I may 
 venture to designate the Septennial Act, as an act 
 of usurpation, tenfold more dangerous to the true 
 Liberty of the Nation, than the pretext for the 
 measure, viz. the apprehended Jacobitual leaven 
 from a new election, was at all likely to have proved. 
 And I repeat the conviction, I have expressed in 
 reference to the practical suppression of the Con- 
 vocation, that no great principle was ever invaded 
 or trampled on, that did not sooner or later avenge 
 itself on the country, and even on the governing 
 classes- themselves, by the consequences of the pre- 
 cedent. The statesman who has not learnt this 
 from history, has missed its most valuable result, 
 and might in my opinion as profitably, and far 
 more delightfully have devoted his hours of study 
 to Sir Walter's Scott's Novels.* 
 
 *This would not be the first time, that these fascinating volumes 
 had been recommended as a substitute for History — a ground of 
 
113 
 
 But T must draw in my reins. Neither my limits 
 permit, nor does my present purpose require that 
 I should do more than exemplify the limitation re- 
 sulting from that latent or potential Power, a due 
 proportion of which to the actual powers I have 
 stated as the second condition of the health and 
 ' vigor of a body politic, by an instance bearing 
 directly on the measure, which in the following 
 section I am to aid in appreciating, and which was 
 the occasion of the whole work. The principle itself, 
 ffjvhich as not contained within the rule and compass 
 of law, its practical manifestations being indetermi- 
 nable and inappreciable a priori, and then only to 
 be recorded as having manifested itself, when the pre- 
 disposing causes and the enduring effects prove the 
 unific mind and energy of the nation to have been in 
 travail ; when they have made audible to the historian 
 that Voice of the People which is the Voice of God — 
 this Principle, I say, (or the Power, that is the sub- 
 ject of it) which [by its very essence existing and 
 working as an Idea only, except in the rare and pre- 
 
 recommendation, to which I could not conscientiously accede, 
 though some half dozen of these Novels, with a perfect recollection 
 of the contents of every page, I read over more often in the 
 course of a year, than I can honestly put down to my own credit. 
 
 I 
 
114 
 
 destined epochs of Growth and Reparations might seem 
 to many fitter matter for verse than for sober argu 
 mentJ I will, by way of compromise, and for the 
 amusement of the reader, sum up in the rhyming prose 
 of an old Puritan poet, consigned to contempt by 
 Mr. Pope, but whose writings, with all their barren 
 flats and dribbling common-place, contain nobler 
 principles, profounder truths, and more that is properly 
 and peculiarly poetic than are to be found in his *own 
 works. The passage in question, however, I found 
 occupying the last page on a flying-sheet of four 
 leaves, entitled England's Misery and Remedy, in a 
 judicious Letter from an Utter- Barrister to his Special 
 Friend, concerning Lieut. -Col. Lilburne's Imprison- 
 ment in Newgate, Sept. 1745; and I beg leave to 
 
 * If it were asked whether the Author then considers the 
 works of the one of equal value with those of the other, or that 
 he holds George Withers as great a writer as Alexander Pope ? 
 his answer would be, that he is as little likely to do so, as the 
 Querist would be to put no greater value on a highly wrought 
 vase of pure silver from the hand of a master, than on an equal 
 weight of Copper Ore that contained a small per centage of 
 separable Gold scattered through it. The Reader will be 
 pleased to observe, that in the stanza here cited, the " State" is 
 used in the largest sense, and as synonimous with the Realm, 
 or entire Body Politic, including Church and State, in the 
 narrower and special sense of the latter term. 
 
 S. T. C. 
 
115 
 
 borrow the introduction, together with the extract, 
 or that part at least, which suited my purpose. 
 
 " Christian Reader, having a vacant place for some 
 few Lines, I have made bold to use some of Major 
 George Withers, his verses out of Vox Pacifica, 
 page 199. 
 
 "Let not your King and Parliament in One, 
 Much less apart, mistake themselves for that 
 Which is most worthy to be thought upon : 
 Nor think they are, essentially, the State. 
 Let them not fancy, that th' Authority 
 And Priviledges upon them bestown, 
 Conferr'd are to set up a Majesty, 
 A Power, or a Glory of their own! 
 But let them know, 'twas for a deeper life, 
 
 Which they but represent 
 
 That there's on earth a yet auguster Thing, 
 Veil'd tho' it be, than Parliament and King." 
 
 The preceding position exemplified. 
 
 And here again the " Royalist's Defence " furnishes 
 me with the introductory paragraph : and I am always 
 glad to find in the words of an elder writer, what 
 I must otherwise have said in my own person — otium 
 simul et autoritatem. 
 
 i 2 
 
116 
 
 "All Englishmen grant, that Arbitrary power is 
 destructive of the best purposes for which power is 
 conferred : and in the preceding chapter it has been 
 shown, that to give an unlimited authority over the 
 fundamental Laws and Rights of the nation, even to 
 the King and two Houses of Parliament jointly, though 
 nothing so bad as to have this boundless power in the 
 King alone, or in the Parliament alone, were never- 
 theless to deprive Englishmen of the Security from 
 Arbitrary Power, which is their birth-right. 
 
 " Upon perusal of former statutes it appears, that 
 the Members of both Houses have been frequently 
 drawn to consent, not only to things prejudicial to 
 the Commonwealth, but, (even in matters of greatest 
 weight) to alter and contradict what formerly them- 
 selves had agreed to, and that, as it happened to 
 please the fancy of the present Prince, or to suit the 
 passions and interests of a prevailing Faction. Wit- 
 ness the statute by which it was enacted that the 
 Proclamation of King Hemy VIII. should be equi- 
 valent to an Act of Parliament; another declaring 
 both Mary and Elizabeth bastards ; and a third 
 statute empowering the King to dispose of the Crown 
 of England by Will and Testament. Add to these 
 
 
117 
 
 the several statutes in the times of King Henry VIII. 
 Edward VI. Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth, set- 
 ting up and pulling down each other's religion, every 
 one of them condemning even to death the profession of 
 the one before established." — Royalists' Defence, p. 41. 
 So far my anonymous author, evidently an old 
 Tory Lawyer of the genuine breed, too enlightened 
 to obfuscate and incense-blacken the shrine, through 
 which the kingly Idea should be translucent, into 
 an Idol to be worshipped in its own right ; but who, 
 considering both the reigning Sovereign and the 
 Houses, as limited and representative functionaries, 
 thought they saw reason, in some few cases, to place 
 more confidence in the former than in the latter : 
 while there were points, which they wished as little 
 as possible to trust to either. With this experience, 
 however, as above stated, (and it would not be 
 difficult to increase the catalogue,) can we wonder 
 that the nation grew sick of parliamentary Religions ? 
 or that the Idea should at last awake and become 
 operative, that what virtually concerned their hu- 
 manity, and involved yet higher relations, than those 
 of the citizen to the state, duties more awful, and 
 more precious privileges, while yet it stood in closest 
 
118 
 connection with all their civil duties and rights, as 
 their indispensable condition and only secure ground — 
 that this was not a matter to be voted up or down, 
 off or on, by fluctuating majorities ! that it was too 
 precious an inheritance to be left at the discretion 
 of an Omnipotency, that had so little claim to Om- 
 niscience? No interest of a single generation, but 
 an entailed Boon too sacred, too momentous, to be 
 shaped and twisted, pared down or plumped up, 
 by any assemblage of Lords, Knights, and Burgesses 
 for the time being ? Men perfectly competent, it 
 may be, to the protection and management of those 
 interests, in which, as having so large a stake they 
 may be reasonably presumed to feel a sincere and 
 lively concern, but who, the experience of ages might 
 teach us, are not the class of persons most likely to 
 study, or feel a deep concern in, the interests here 
 spoken of, in either sense of the term Church ; i.e. 
 whether the interests be of a kingdom "not of the 
 World," or those of an Estate of the Realm, and a con- 
 stituent part, therefore, of the same System with the 
 State, though as the opposite Pole. The results at all 
 events have been such, whenever the Representatives 
 of the One Interest has assumed the direct control 
 
119 
 
 of the other, as gave occasion long ago to the 
 rhyming couplet, quoted as proverbial by Luther : 
 
 Cum Mare siccatur, cum Daemon ad astra levatur, 
 Tunc Clero Laicus fidus Amicus erit. . 
 
 But if the nation walled to withdraw the religion of 
 the realm from the changes and revolutions incident 
 to whatever is subjected to the suffrages of the repre- 
 sentative assemblies, whether of the state or of the 
 church, the trustees of the proprietage or those of 
 the nationalty, the first question is, how this reser- 
 vation is to be declared, and by what means to be 
 effected. These means, the security for the per- 
 manence of the established religion, must, it may be 
 foreseen, be imperfect : for what can be otherwise, 
 that depends on human will ? but yet it may be 
 abundantly sufficient to declare the aim and inten- 
 tion of the provision ! Our ancestors did the best it 
 was in their power to do. Knowing by recent expe- 
 rience that multitudes never blush, that, numerous 
 assemblies, however respectably composed, are not 
 exempt from temporary hallucinations, and the influ- 
 ences of party passion; that there are things, for the 
 conservation of which — 
 
120 
 
 Men safelier trust to heaven, than to themselves, 
 When least themselves, in storms of loud debate 
 Where folly is contagious, and too oft 
 Even wise men leave their better sense at home 
 To chide and wonder at them, when returned. 
 
 Zapolya. 
 
 Knowing this, our ancestors chose to place their 
 reliance on the honour and conscience of an indivi- 
 dual, whose comparative height, it was believed, would 
 exempt him from the gusts and shifting currents, 
 that agitate the lower region of the political atmos- 
 phere. Accordingly, on a change of dynasty they 
 bound the person, who had accepted the crown in 
 trust — bound him for himself and his successors by 
 an oath, to refuse his consent (without which no 
 change in the existing law can be effected), to any 
 measure subverting or tending to subvert the safety 
 and independence of the National Church, or which 
 exposed the realm to the danger of a return of that 
 foreign usurper, misnamed spiritual, from which it had 
 with so many sacrifices emancipated itself. However 
 unconstitutional therefore the royal veto on a Bill 
 presented by the Lords and Commons may be deemed 
 in all ordinary cases, this is clearly an exception. For 
 it is no additional power conferred on the king ; but a 
 
121 
 
 limit imposed on him by the constitution itself for its 
 own safety. Previously to the ceremonial act, which 
 announces him the only lawful and sovereign head 
 of both the church and the state, the oath is adminis- 
 tered to him religiously as the representative person 
 and crowned majesty of the nation. Religiously, 
 I say, for the mind of the nation, existing only as an 
 Idea, can act distinguishable on the ideal powers 
 alone — that is, on the reason and conscience. 
 
 It only remains then to determine, what it is to 
 which the Coronation Oath obliges the conscience 
 of the king. And this may be best determined by 
 considering what in reason and in conscience the 
 Nation had a right to impose. Now that the 
 Nation had a right to decide for the King's con- 
 science and reason, and for the reason and con- 
 science of all his successors, and of his and their 
 counsellors and ministers, laic and ecclesiastic, on 
 questions of theology, and controversies of faith — ex. 
 gr. that it is not allowable in directing our thoughts 
 to a departed Saint, the Virgin Mary for instance, 
 to say Ora pro nobis, Beata Virgo, though there 
 would be no harm in saying, Oret pro nobis, precor, 
 beata Virgo ; whether certain books are to be held 
 canonical ; whether the text, " They shall be saved 
 
122 
 
 as through fire," refers to a purgatorial process in 
 the body, or during the interval between its dissolu- 
 tion and the day of judgment; whether the words, 
 " this is my body," are to be understood literally, 
 and if so, whether it is by consubstantiation with, 
 or transubstantiation of, bread and wine; and that 
 the members of both Houses of Parliament, together 
 with the Privy Counsellors and all the Clergy shall 
 abjure and denounce the theory last mentioned — 
 this I utterly deny. And if this were the whole and 
 sole object and intention of the Oath, however large 
 the number might be of the persons who imposed 
 or were notoriously favorable to the imposition, so 
 far from recognizing the Nation in their collective 
 number, I should regard them as no other than an 
 aggregate of intolerant mortals, from bigotry and 
 presumption forgetful of their fallibility, and not 
 less ignorant of their own rights, than callous to 
 those of succeeding generations. If the articles 
 of faith therein disclaimed and denounced were the 
 substance and proper intention of the Oath, and 
 not to be understood, as in all common sense they 
 ought to be, as temporary marks because the known 
 accompaniments of other and legitimate grounds of 
 disqualification ; and which only in reference to these, 
 
123 
 
 and only as long as they implied their existence, were 
 it objects of political interference ; it would be as im- 
 possible for me, as for the late Mr. Canning, to attach 
 any such sanctity to the Coronation Oath, as should 
 prevent it from being superannuated in times of clearer 
 light and less heat. But that these theological 
 articles, and the exclusion of all, who professed to 
 receive them as parts of their creed, are not the evils 
 which it is the true and legitimate purpose of the 
 oath to preclude, and which constitute and define 
 its obligation on the royal conscience ; and what 
 the real evils are, that do indeed disqualify for offices 
 of national trust, and give the permanent obligatory 
 character to the engagement — this, in which I in- 
 clude the exposition of the essential characters of 
 the Christian or Catholic Church ; and of a very 
 different church, which assumes the name ; and the 
 application of the premises to an appreciation on 
 principle of the late bill, and now the law of the 
 land ; will occupy the remaining portion of the volume. 
 And now I may be permitted to look back on 
 the road, we have past : in the course of which, I 
 have placed before you, patient fellow-traveller! a 
 small part indeed of what might, on a suitable occa- 
 sion, be profitably said ; but it is all, that for my 
 
124 
 present purpose, I deem it necessary to say respect- 
 ing three out of the five themes that were to form 
 the subjects of the first part of this — small volume, 
 shall I call it? or large and dilated epistle? — First, 
 but here let me apologize to the reader for any extra 
 trouble I may have imposed on him, by employing 
 the same term (the State, namely) in two senses, 
 though I flatter myself, I have in each instance so 
 guarded it as to leave scarcely the possibility, that 
 'a moderately attentive reader should understand the 
 word in one sense, when I had meant it in the other, 
 or confound the State as a whole, and compre- 
 hending the Church, with the State as one of the 
 two constituent parts, and in contra-distinction from 
 the Church— first, I have given briefly but, I trust, 
 with sufficient clearness the right idea of a State, 
 or Body Politic ; " State" being here synonimous 
 with a constituted Realm, Kingdom, Commonwealth, 
 or Nation, i. e. where the integral parts, classes, 
 or orders are so balanced, or interdependent, as 
 to constitute, more or less, a moral unit, an or- 
 ganic whole; and as arising out of the Idea of a 
 State I have added the Idea of a Constitution, as 
 the informing principle of its coherence and unity. 
 But in applying the above to our own kingdom 
 
125 
 
 (and with this qualification the reader is requested 
 to understand me as speaking in all the following- 
 remarks), it was necessary to observe, and I willingly 
 avail myself of this opportunity to repeat the 
 observation — that the Constitution, in its widest 
 sense as the Constitution of the Realm, arose out of, 
 and in fact consisted in, the co-existence of the 
 Constitutional State (in the second acceptation of 
 the term) with the King as its head, and of the 
 Church (i. e. the National Church), likewise the 
 King as its head, and lastly of the King as the 
 Head and Majesty of the whole Nation. The 
 reader was cautioned therefore not to confound 
 it with either of its constituent parts; that he 
 must first master the true idea of each of these 
 severally; and that in the synopsis or conjunc- 
 tion of the three, the Idea of the English Con- 
 stitution, the Constitution of the Realm, will rise 
 of itself before him. And in aid of this purpose 
 and following this order, I have given according 
 to my best judgment, first, the Idea of the State, 
 and the State-legislature, and of the two constituent 
 orders, the landed, with its two classes, the Major 
 Barons, and the Franklins ; and the Personal, con- 
 sisting of the mercantile, or commercial ; the manu- 
 
126 
 
 facturing, the distributive and the professional ; these 
 two orders corresponding to the two great all-including 
 interests of the State, — the landed, namely, to the 
 permanence, — the Personal to the progression. 
 The Possessions, of both orders taken collectively, 
 form the * proprietage of the Realm. In contra- 
 distinction from this and as my second theme, I have 
 explained (and as being the principal object of this 
 work, more diffusely) the nationally, its nature 
 and purposes, and the duties and qualifications of 
 its Trustees and Functionaries. In the same sense 
 as I at once oppose and conjoin the Nation a lty 
 to the Proprietage ; in the same antithesis and 
 conjunction I use and understand the phrase, 
 Church and State. Lastly, I have essayed to 
 determine the Constitutional Idea of the Crown, 
 and its relations to the Nation, to which I have 
 added a few sentences on the relations of the Nation 
 
 * To convey his meaning precisely is a debt, which an Author 
 owes to his readers. He therefore who to escape the charge of 
 pedantry, will rather be misunderstood than startle a fastidious 
 critic with an unusual term, may be compared to the man who 
 should pay his creditor, in base or counterfeit coin, when he had 
 gold or silver ingots in his possession, to the precise amount 
 of the debt ; and this under the pretence of their unshapeliness 
 and want of the mint impression. 
 
127 
 
 to the State. To the completion of this first part,, 
 of my undertaking, two subjects still remain to be 
 treated of — and to each of these I shall devote a 
 small section, the title of the first being " On the 
 Idea of the Christian Church ;" that of the other, 
 " On a third Church :" the name of which I with- 
 hold for the present, in the expectation of deducing 
 it by contrast from the contra-distinguishing charac- 
 ters of the former. 
 
IDEA 
 
 THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 
 
"We (said Luther), tell our Lord God plainly: If he 
 will have his Church, then He must look how to maintain 
 and defend it: for we can neither uphold nor protect it. 
 And well for us, that it is so ! For in case we could, or 
 were ahle to defend it, we should become the proudest 
 Asses under heaven. Who is the Church's Protector, that 
 hath promised to be with her to the end, and the gates of 
 Hell shall not prevail against her? Kings, Diets, Parlia- 
 ments, Lawyers ? Marry, no such cattle." — Colloquia Men- 
 
IDEA OF THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. 
 
 The practical conclusion from our enquiries re- 
 specting the organ and Idea of the National Church, 
 the paramount end and purpose of which is the 
 continued and progressive civilization of the community 
 (emollit mores nee shut esse feros), was this : that 
 though many things may be conceived of a tendency 
 to diminish the fitness of particular men, or of a parti- 
 cular class, to be chosen as trustees and functionaries 
 of the same; though there may be many points more 
 or less adverse to the perfection of the establishment ; 
 there are yet but two absolute disqualifications : 
 namely, allegiance to a foreign power, or an acknow- 
 ledgment of any other visible head of the Church, but 
 our sovereign lord the king; and compulsory celibacy 
 in connection with, and dependence on, a foreign and 
 extra-national head. We are now called to a different 
 contemplation, to the Idea of the Christian Church. 
 
 Of the Christian Church, I say, not of Christianity. 
 To the ascertainment and enucleation of the latter, 
 
 k 2 
 
132 
 
 of the great redemptive process which began in the 
 separation of light from Chaos {Hades, or the Indis- 
 tinctiofi), and has its end in the union of life with 
 God, the whole summer and autumn, and now com- 
 menced winter of my life have been dedicated. Hi " 
 labor, Hoc opus est, on which alone the author 
 rests his hope, that he shall be found not to have 
 lived altogether in vain. Of the Christian Church only, 
 and of this no further than is necessary for the 
 distinct understanding of the National Church, it is 
 my purpose now to speak : and for this purpose it 
 will be sufficient to enumerate the essential characters 
 by which the Christian church is distinguished. 
 
 First Character. — The Christian Church is 
 not a Kingdom, Realm, {royaume), or State, 
 (sensu latiori) of the World, that is, of the 
 aggregate, or total number of the kingdoms, states, 
 realms, or bodies politic, (these words being, as far as 
 our present argument is concerned, perfectly synoni- 
 mous), into which civilized man is distributed ; and 
 which, collectively taken, constitute the civilized 
 world. The Christian Church, I say, is no state, ' 
 kingdom, or realm of this world ; nor is it an Estate 
 of any such realm, kingdom or state ; but it is the 
 
133 
 
 appointed Opposite to them all, collectively — the 
 sustaining, correcting, befriending Opposite of the 
 world ! the compensating counterforce to the inherent* 
 and inevitable evils and defects of the State, as a 
 State, and without reference to its better or worse 
 
 * It is not without pain that I have advanced this position, 
 without the accompanying proofs and documents which it may 
 be thought to require, and without the elucidations which I am 
 sure it deserves ; but which are precluded alike by the purpose 
 and the limits of the present tract. I will, however, take this 
 opportunity of earnestly recommending to such of my readers as 
 understand German, Lessing's Ernst und Falk : Gesprache f iir 
 Freymaurer. They will find it in Vol. vii. of the Leipsic edition 
 of Lessing's Works. I am not aware of a translation. Mr. 
 Blackwood, or I should say Christopher North, would add one to 
 the very many obligations he has already conferred on his rea- 
 ders, (among whom he has few more constant or more thankful 
 than myself) by suggesting the task to some of his contributors. 
 For there are more than one, I doubt not, who possess taste to 
 feel, and power to transfer the point, elegance, and exquisite, yet 
 effortless precision and conciseness of Lessing's philosophic and 
 controversial writings. I know nothing that is at once like them, 
 and equal to them, but the Provincial Letters of Pascal. The 
 four Dialogues, to which I have referred/would not occupy much 
 more than a quarter of a sheet each, in his magazine, which, in a 
 deliberate and conscientious adoption of a very common-place 
 compliment, I profess to think, as a magazine, and considering 
 the number of years it has kept on the wing — incomparable — but 
 at the same time 1 crave the venerable Christopher's permission 
 to avow myself a sturdy dissentient as on some other points, so 
 especially from the Anti- Huskissonian part of his Toryism. 
 
 S.T.C. 
 
134 
 
 construction as a particular state ; while whatever 
 is beneficent and humanizing in the aims, tendencies, 
 and proper objects of the state, it collects in itself as 
 in a focus, to radiate them back in a higher quality : 
 or to change the metaphor, it completes and strength- 
 ens the edifice of the state, without interference or 
 commixture, in the mere act of laying and securing 
 its own foundations. And for these services the 
 Church of Christ asks of the state neither wages nor 
 dignities. She asks only protection, and to be let 
 alone. These indeed she demands; but even these 
 only on the ground, that there is nothing in her con- 
 stitution, nor in her discipline, ■ inconsistent with the 
 interests of the state, nothing resistant or impedimental 
 to the state in the exercise of its rightful powers, in 
 the fulfilment of its appropriate duties, or in the effec- 
 tuation of its legitimate objects. It is a fundamental 
 principle of all legislation, that the state shall leave 
 the largest portion of personal free-agency to each of 
 its citizens, that is compatible with the free-agency of 
 all, and not subversive of the ends of its own existence 
 as a state. And though a negative, it is a most 
 important distinctive character of the Church of 
 Christ, ' that she asks nothing for her members as 
 
135 
 
 Christians, which they are not already entitled to 
 demand as citizens and subjects. 
 
 Second Character. — The Christian Church is 
 not a secret community. In the once current (and 
 well worthy to be re-issued) terminology of our elder 
 divines, it is objective in its nature and purpose, not 
 mystic or subjective, i. e. not like reason or the court 
 of conscience, existing only in and for the individual. 
 Consequently the church here spoken of is not " the 
 kingdom of God which is within, and which cometh 
 not with observation (Luke xvii. 20, 21), but most 
 observable (Luke xxi. 28-31)." — A city built on a 
 hill, and not to be hid — an institution consisting of 
 visible and public communities. In one sentence, it 
 is the Church visible and militant under Christ. And 
 this visibility, this publicity, is its second distinctive 
 character. The 
 
 Third Character — reconciles the two pre- 
 ceding, and gives the condition, under which their 
 co-existence in the same subject becomes possible. 
 Antagonist forces are necessarily of the same kind. 
 It is an old rule of logic, that only concerning two 
 subjects of the same kind can it be properly said 
 that they are opposites. Inter res heterogeneas non 
 
136 
 
 datur oppositio, i. e. contraries cannot be opposites. 
 Alike in the primary and the metaphorical use of the 
 word, Rivals (Rivales) are those only who inhabit the 
 opposite banks of the same stream. 
 
 Now, in conformity to character the first, the 
 Christian Church dare not be considered as a counter- 
 pole to any particular State, the word, State, here 
 taken in the largest sense. Still less can it, like the 
 national clerisy, be opposed to the State in the 
 narrower sense. The Christian Church, as such, has 
 no nationalty entrusted to its charge. It forms no 
 counter-balance to the collective heritage of the realm. 
 The phrase, Church and State, has a sense and a pro- 
 priety in reference to the National Church alone. 
 The Church of Christ cannot be placed in this con- 
 junction and antithesis without forfeiting the very 
 name of Christian. The true and only contra-position 
 of the Christian Church is to the world. Her para- 
 mount aim and object, indeed, is another world, not 
 a world to come exclusively, but likewise another 
 world that now is (See Appendix, A), and to the 
 
 A 
 
 concerns of which alone the epithet spiritual, can, 
 without a mischievous abuse of the word, be applied. 
 But as the necessary consequence and accompani- 
 
137 
 
 ments of the means by which she seeks to attain this 
 especial end; and as a collateral object, it is her 
 office to counteract the evils that result by a common 
 necessity from all Bodies Politic, the system or aggre- 
 gate of which is the world. And, observe that the 
 nisus, or counter-agency, of the Christian Church is 
 against the evil results only, and not (directly, at least, 
 or by primary intention) against the defective institu- 
 tutions that may have caused or aggravated them. 
 
 But on the other hand, by virtue of the second 
 character, the Christian Church is to exist in every 
 kingdom and state of the world, in the form of 
 public communities, is to exist as a real and osten- 
 sible power. The consistency of the first and 
 second depends on, and is fully effected by, the 
 
 Third Character 
 
 of the Church of Christ : namely, the absence of 
 any visible head or sovereign — by the non-existence, 
 nay the utter preclusion, of any local or personal 
 centre of unity, of any single source of universal 
 power. This fact may be thus illustrated. Kepler 
 and Newton, substituting the idea of the infinite, for 
 the conception of a finite and determined world, 
 
138 
 
 assumed in the Ptolemaic Astronomy, superseded 
 and drove out the notion of a one central point or 
 body of the Universe : and finding a centre in 
 every point of matter, and an absolute circum- 
 ference no where, explained at once the unity and 
 the distinction that co-exist throughout the creation 
 by focal instead of central bodies, the attractive and 
 restraining power of the sun or focal orb in each 
 particular system, supposing and resulting from an 
 actual power, present in all and over all, throughout 
 an indeterminable multitude of systems — and this, 
 demonstrated as it has been by science, and verified 
 by observation, we rightly name the true system of 
 the heavens. And even such is the scheme and 
 true idea of the Christian Church. In the primitive 
 times, and as long as the churches retained the 
 form given them by the Apostles and Apostolic 
 men, every community, or in the words of a father 
 of the second century, (for the pernicious fashion 
 of assimilating the Christian to the Jewish, as after- 
 wards to the Pagan, Ritual, by false analogies, was 
 almost coeval with the church itself,) every altar 
 had its own bishop, every flock its own pastor, who 
 derived his authority immediately from Christ, the 
 
139 
 
 universal Shepherd, and acknowledged no other 
 superior than the same Christ, speaking by his 
 spirit in the unanimous decision of any number of 
 bishops or elders, according to his promise, " Where 
 two or three are gathered together in my name, 
 there am I in the midst of them." # 
 
 * Questions of dogmatic divinity do not enter into the purpose 
 of this enquiry. I am even anxious not to give the work a 
 theological character. It is, however, within the scope of my 
 argument to observe, that, as may be incontrovertibly proved by 
 other equivalent declarations of our Lord, this promise is not 
 confined to houses of worship and prayer-meetings exclusively. 
 And though I cannot offer the same justification for what follows, 
 yet the interest and importance of the subject will, I trust, 
 excuse me if I remark, that even in reference to meetings for 
 divine worship, the true import of these gracious, soul-awing 
 words, is too generally overlooked. It is not the comments or 
 harangues of unlearned and fanatical preachers that I have in 
 my mind, but sermons of great and deserved celebrity, and 
 divines whose learning, well-regulated zeal, and sound scriptural 
 views are as honourable to the established church, as their piety, 
 beneficence and blameless life, are to the Christian name, when 
 I say that passages occur which might almost lead one to con- 
 jecture, that the authors had found the words, " I will come 
 and join you," instead of, " I am in the midst of you," — (Compare 
 I. John, iii. 24) — passages from which it is at least difficult not 
 to infer, that they had interpreted the promise, as of a corporal 
 co-presence,*instead of a spiritual immanence (ori ixevei iv tjihv) 
 as of an individual coming in or down, and taking a place, as 
 soon as the required number of petitioners was completed ! As 
 if, in short, this presence, this actuation of the " I AM," (hpit 
 
140 
 
 Hence the unitive relation of the churches to each 
 other, and of each to all, being equally actual 
 indeed, but likewise equally ideal, i. e. mystic 
 
 kv fii(T((i aiTwv) were an after-consequence, an accidental and 
 separate result and reward of the contemporaneous and con- 
 tiguous worshipping — and not the total act itself, of which the 
 spiritual Christ, ,f one and the same in all the faithful, is the 
 originating and perfective focal unity. Even as the physical 
 life is in each limb and organ of the body, " all in every part;" 
 but is manifested as life, by being one in all and thus making all 
 one : ■ even so with Christ, our Spiritual Life! He is in each true 
 believer, in his solitary prayer and during his silent communion 
 in the watches of the night, no less than in the congregation of 
 the faithful ; but he manifests his indwelling presence more 
 characteristically, with especial evidence, when many, convened 
 in his name, whether for prayer or for council, do through him 
 become one. 
 
 I would that these preceding observations were as little con- 
 nected with the main subject of this volume, as to some they 
 will appear to be ! But as the mistaking of symbols and analo- 
 gies for metaphors (See Aids to Reflection, pp. 198, 254, G. 398,) 
 has been a main occasion and support of the worst errors in 
 Protestantism : so the understanding the same symbols in a 
 literal i. e. phenomenal sense, notwithstanding the most earnest 
 warnings against it, the most express declarations of the folly 
 and danger of interpreting sensually what was delivered of 
 objects swpe?'-sensual — this was the rank wilding, on which " the 
 prince of this world," the lust of power and worldly aggrandize- 
 ment, was enabled to graft, one by one, the whole.branchery of 
 papal superstition and imposture. A truth not less important 
 might be conveyed by reversing the image — by representing the 
 papal monarchy as the stem or trunk circulating a poison-sap 
 
141 
 
 and supersensual, as the relation of the whole 
 church to its one invisible Head, the church with 
 and under Christ, as a one kingdom or state, is 
 
 through the branches successively grafted thereon, the previous 
 and natural fruit of which was at worst only mawkish and innu- 
 tritious. Yet among the dogmas or articles of belief that contra- 
 distinguish the Roman Catholic from the Reformed Churches, 
 the most important and, in their practical effects and con- 
 sequences, the most pernicious, I cannot but regard as refracted 
 and distorted truths, profound ideas sensualized into idols, or at 
 the lowest rate lofty and affecting imaginations, safe while they 
 remained general and indefinite, but debased and rendered 
 noxious by their application in detail : ex. gr. the doctrine of the 
 Communion of Saints, or the sympathy between all the members 
 of the universal church, which death itself doth not interrupt, 
 exemplified in St. Antony and the cure of sore eyes, St- Boniface 
 and success in brewing, &c. &c &c. What the same doctrines 
 now are, used as the pretexts and shaped into the means and 
 implements of priestly power and revenue : or rather, what the 
 whole scheme is of Romish rites, doctrines, institutions, and 
 practices in their combined and full operation, where it exists 
 in undisputed sovereignty, neither repressed by the prevalence, 
 nor modified by the light of a purer faith, nor held in check by 
 the consciousness of Protestant neighbours and lookers-on — 
 this is a question, which cannot be kept too distinct from the 
 former. And, as at the risk of passing for a secret favourer of 
 superannuated superstitions, I have spoken out my thoughts of 
 the Catholic theology, so and at a far more serious risk of being 
 denounced as an intolerant bigot, I will declare what, after a two 
 years' residence in exclusively Catholic countries, and in situa- 
 tions and under circumstances that afforded more than ordinary 
 means of acquainting myself with the workings and the proceeds of 
 
142 
 
 hidden : while from all its several component 
 monads, (the particular visible churches I mean,) 
 Caesar receiving the things that are Caesar's, and 
 
 the machinery, was the impression left on my mind as to the effects 
 and influences of the Romish (most ?m-Catholic) religion, — not 
 as even according to its own canons and authorised decisions it 
 ought to be; but, as it actually and practically exists. — {See this 
 distinction ably and eloquently enforced in a Catholic work, intitled 
 Riforma d'Italia). This impression, and the convictions 
 grounded thereon, which have assuredly not been weakened by 
 the perusal of the Rev. Blanco White's most affecting statements, 
 and by the recent history of Spain and Portugal, I cannot convey 
 more satisfactorily to myself than by repeating the answer, 
 which I long since returned to the same question put by a 
 friend, viz. — * 
 
 When I contemplate the whole system, as it affects the great 
 fundamental principles of morality, the terra firma, as it were, 
 of our humanity; then trace its operation on the sources and 
 conditions of national strength and well-being ; and lastly, con- 
 sider its woful influences on the innocence and sanctity of the 
 female mind and imagination, on the faith and happiness, the 
 gentle fragrancy and unnoticed ever-present verdure of domestic 
 life— I can with difficulty avoid applying to it what the Rabbins 
 fable of the fratricide Cain, after the curse : that the firm earth 
 trembled wherever he strode, and the grass turned black beneath 
 his feet. 
 
 Indeed, if my memory does not cheat me, some of the " mystic 
 divines," in their fond humour of allegorizing, tell us, that in Gen. 
 iv. 3 — 8. is correctly narrated the history of the first apostate 
 church, that began by sacrificing amiss, impropriating the fruit of 
 the ground (i. e. temporal possessions) under spiritual pretexts ; 
 and ended in slaying the shepherd brother who brought " the 
 
143 
 
 confronted by no rival Caesar, by no authority, 
 which existing locally, temporally, and in the person 
 of a fellow mortal, must be essentially of the same 
 kind with his own, notwithstanding any attempt to 
 belie its true nature under the perverted and con- 
 tradictory name of spiritual, sees only so many 
 loyal groups, who, claiming no peculiar rights, 
 make themselves known to him as Christians, only 
 by the more scrupulous and exemplary performance 
 of their duties as citizens and subjects. And here 
 let me add a few sentences on the use, abuse, and 
 misuse of the phrase, spiritual Power. In the 
 only appropriate sense of the words, spiritual power 
 is a power that acts on the spirits of men. Now 
 the spirit of a man, or the spiritual part of our 
 being, is the intelligent Will : or (to speak less 
 abstractly) it is the capability, with which the 
 Father of Spirits hath endowed man of being de- 
 termined to action by the ultimate ends, which 
 the reason alone can present. (The Understanding, 
 which derives all its materials from the Senses, 
 
 firstlings of his fold," holy and without blemish, to the Great 
 Shepherd, and presented them as "new creatures," before the 
 Lord and Owner of the Flocks. — S. T. C. 
 
144 
 
 can dictate purposes only, i. e. such ends as are in 
 their turn means to other ends.) The ultimate ends, 
 by which the will is to be determined, and by 
 which alone the will, not corrupted, " the spirit 
 made perfect," would be determined, are called, in 
 relation -to the Reason, moral Ideas. Such are the 
 Jdeas of the Eternal, the Good, the True, the Holy 
 the Idea of God as the Absoluteness and Reality 
 (or real ground) of all these, or as the Supreme 
 Spirit in which all these substantially are, and 
 are one. Lastly, the idea of the responsible 
 will itself; of duty, of guilt, or evil in itself 
 without reference to its outward and separable 
 consequences, &c. &c. 
 
 A power, therefore, that acts on the appetites 
 and passions, which we possess in common with 
 the beasts, by motives derived from the senses 
 and sensations, has no pretence to the name ; 
 nor can it without the grossest abuse of the word 
 be called a spiritual power. Whether the man 
 expects the auto de ft, the fire and faggots, with 
 which he is threatened, to take place at Lisbon 
 or Smithfield, or in some dungeon in the centre 
 of the earth, makes no difference in the kind of 
 
145 
 
 motive by which he is influenced; nor of course 
 in the nature of the power, which acts on his 
 passions by means of it. It would be strange in- 
 deed, if ignorance and superstition, the dense and 
 rank fogs that most strangle and suffocate the 
 light of the spirit in man, should constitute a 
 spirituality in the power, which takes advantage 
 of them ! 
 
 This is a gross abuse of the term, spiritual. The 
 following, sanctioned as it is by custom and sta- 
 tute, yet (speaking exclusively as a philologist 
 and without questioning its legality) I venture to 
 point out, as a misuse of the term. Our great 
 Church dignitaries sit in the Upper House of the 
 Convocation, as, Prelates of the National Church : 
 and as Prelates, may exercise ecclesiastical power. 
 In the House of Lords they sit as barons, and by 
 virtue of the baronies which, much against the 
 will of these haughty prelates, our kings forced 
 upon them : and as such, they exercise a Parlia- 
 mentary power. As bishops of the Church of 
 Christ only can they possess, or exercise (and 
 God forbid ! I should doubt, that as such, many 
 of them do faithfully exercise) a spiritual power, 
 
146 
 
 which neither king can give, nor King and Par- 
 liament take away. As Christian bishops, they 
 are spiritual pastors, by power of the spirit ruling 
 the flocks committed to their charge; but they 
 are temporal peers and prelates. The 
 
 Fourth Character 
 
 of the Christian Church, and a necessary conse- 
 quence of the first and third, is its Catholicity, i. e. 
 universality. It is neither Anglican, Gallican, nor 
 Roman, neither Latin nor Greek. Even the Catholic 
 and Apostolic Church of England, is a less safe 
 expression than the Churches of Christ in England : 
 though the Catholic Church in England, or (what 
 would be still better,) the Catholic Church under 
 Christ throughout Great Britain and Ireland, is 
 justifiable and appropriate : for through the pre- 
 sence of its only head and sovereign, entire in each 
 and one in all, the Church universal is spiritually 
 perfect in every true Church, and of course in any 
 number of such Churches, which from circumstance 
 of place, or the community of country or of lan- 
 guage, we have occasion to speak of collectively. 
 (I have already, here and elsewhere, observed, and 
 
147 
 
 scarcely a day passes without some occasion to 
 repeat the observation, that an equivocal term, or a 
 word with two or more different meanings, is never 
 quite harmless. Thus, it is at least an incon- 
 venience in our language, that the term Church, 
 instead of being confined to its proper sense, Kirk, 
 iEdes Kyriacse, or the Lord's House, should like- 
 wise be the word by which our forefathers rendered 
 the ecclesia, or the eccleti (eW^™)}. e . evocati, the 
 called out of the world, named collectively ; and like- 
 wise our term for the clerical establishment. To the 
 Called at Rome — to the Church of Christ at Corinth 
 — or in Philippi— such was the language of the 
 upostolic age ; and the change since then has been 
 no improvement.) The true Church of England is 
 the National Church, or Clerisy. There exists, God 
 be thanked ! a Catholic and Apostolic church in 
 England : and I thank God also for the Constitu- 
 tional and Ancestral Church of England. 
 
 These are the four distinctions, or peculiar and 
 essential marks, by which the church with Christ 
 as its head is distinguished from the National 
 Church, and separated from every possible counter- 
 feit, that has, or shall have, usurped its name. And 
 l2 
 
148 
 
 as an important' comment on the same, and in con- 
 firmation of the principle which I have attempted 
 to establish, I earnestly recommend for the reader's 
 perusal, the following transcript from Dr. Henry 
 Mo re's Modest Enquiry, or True Idea of Anti- 
 christianism. 
 
 "■ We will suppose some one prelate, who had got 
 the start of the rest, to put in for the title and autho- 
 rity of Universal Bishop : and for the obtaining of 
 this sovereignty, he will first pretend, that it is unfit 
 that the visible Catholic Church, being one, should 
 not be united under one visible head, which reason- 
 ing, though it makes a pretty shew at first sight, 
 will yet, being closely looked into, vanish into 
 smoke. For this is but a quaint concinnity urged 
 in behalf of an impossibility. For the erecting such 
 an office for one man, which no one man in the 
 world is able to perform, implies that to be possible 
 which is indeed impossible. Whence it is plain that 
 the head will be too little for the body ; which there- 
 fore will be a piece of mischievous assymmetry or 
 inconcinnity also. No one mortal can be a compe- 
 tent head for that church which has a right to be 
 Catholic, and to overspread the face of the whole 
 
149 
 
 earth. There can be no such head but Christ, who 
 is not mere man, but God in the divine humanity, 
 and therefore present with every part of the church, 
 and every member thereof, at what distance soever. 
 But to set some one mortal bishop over the whole 
 church, were to suppose that great bishop of our 
 spirit absent from it, who has promised that he will 
 be with her to the end of the world. Nor does the 
 Church Catholic on earth lose her unity thereby. 
 Far rather hereby only is or can she be one. " As 
 rationally might it be pretended, that it is not the 
 Life, the Rector Spiritus prasens per totum et in omni 
 parte, but the Crown of the skull, or some one Con- 
 volute of the brain, that causes and preserves the 
 unity of the Body Natural." — Inserted by the tran- 
 scriber. 
 
 Such and so futile is the first pretence. But if 
 this will not serve the turn, there is another in re- 
 serve. And notwithstanding the demonstrated im- 
 possibility of the thing, still there must be one 
 visible head of the church universal, the successor 
 and vicar of Christ, for the slaking of controver- 
 sies, for the determination of disputed points ! We 
 will not stop here to expose the weakness of the 
 
150 
 
 argument (not alas ! peculiar to the sophists of 
 Rome, nor employed in support of papal infallibility 
 only), that this or that must be, and consequently is, 
 because sundry inconveniences would result from the 
 want of it! and this without considering whether 
 these inconveniences have been prevented or removed 
 by its (pretended) presence ; whether they do not 
 continue in spite of this pretended remedy or anti- 
 dote ; whether these inconveniences were intended 
 by providence to be precluded, and not rather for 
 wise purposes permitted to continue ; and lastly, 
 whether the remedy may not be worse than the 
 disease, like the sugar of lead administered by the 
 Empiric, who cured a fever fit by exchanging it for 
 the dead palsy. Passing by this sophism, therefore, 
 it is sufficient to reply, that all points necessary are 
 so plain and so widely known, that it is impossible 
 that a Christian, who seeks those aids which the true 
 head of the church has promised shall never be 
 sought in vain, should err therein from lack of 
 knowing better. And those who, from defects of 
 head or heart, are blind to this widely diffused light, 
 and who neither seek nor wish those aids, are still 
 less likely to be influenced by a minor and deriva- 
 
151 
 
 tive authority. But for other things, whether cere- 
 monies or conceits, whether matters of discipline or 
 of opinion, their diversity does not at all break the 
 unity of the outward and visible church, as long as 
 they do not subvert the fundamental laws of Christ's 
 kingdom, nor contradict the terms of admission into 
 his church, nor contravene the essential characters, 
 by which it subsists, and is distinguished as the 
 Christian Catholic Church. 
 
 To these sentiments, borrowed from one of the 
 most philosophical of our learned elder Divines, I have 
 only to add an observation as suggested by them — 
 that as many and fearful mischiefs have ensued from 
 the confusion of the Christian with the National 
 Church, so have many and grievous practical errors, 
 and much unchristian intolerance, arisen from con- 
 founding the outward and visible church of Christ, 
 with the spiritual and invisible church, known only 
 to the Father of all Spirits. The perfection of the 
 former is to afford every opportunity, and to present 
 no obstacle, to a gradual advancement in the latter. 
 The different degrees of progress, the imperfections, 
 errors and accidents of false perspective, which 
 lessen indeed with your advance — spiritual advance 
 
152 
 
 — but to a greater or lesser amount are inseparable 
 from all progression ; these, the interpolated half- 
 truths of the twilight, through which every soul 
 must pass from darkness to the spiritual sunrise, 
 belong to the visible church as objects of Hope, 
 Patience, and Charity alone. 
 
ON THE 
 
 THIRD POSSIBLE CHURCH, 
 
 CHURCH OF ANTICHRIST. 
 
 Ecclesia Catholica non, ma il Papismo denunciamo, perchfe suggerito dal 
 lnteresse, perche fortificato dalla menzogna, perche radicato dal piu abbom- 
 inevole despotismo, perche contrario al diritto e ai titoli incommunicabili di 
 Cristo, ed alia tranquillity d'ogni Chiesa e d'ogni State. — Spanzotti. 
 
Thus, on the depluming of the Pope, every bird had his 
 own feather ; in the partage whereof, what he had gotten by 
 Sacrilege, was restored to Christ; what by Usurpation, was 
 given to the king, the (National) Church and the State"; what 
 by Oppression, was remitted to each particular Christian. 
 
 Fuller's Church History of Britain, Book v. 
 
 
155 
 
 ON THE CHURCH, NEITHER NATIONAL 
 NOR UNIVERSAL. 
 
 If our forefathers were annoyed with the cant of 
 over-boiling zeal, arising out of the belief, that the 
 Pope is Antichrist, and likewise (sexu mutato) the 
 Harlot of Babylon : we are more endangered by the 
 twaddle of humid charity, which (some years ago at 
 least) used to drizzle, a something between mist and 
 small rain, from the higher region of our church 
 atmosphere. It was sanctioned, I mean, both in the 
 pulpit and the senate by sundry dignitaries, whose 
 horror of Jacobinism during the then panic of Pro- 
 perty led them to adopt the principles and language 
 of Laud and his faction. And once more the Church 
 of Rome, in contrast with the Protestant Dissenters, 
 became " a right dear, though erring Sister." And 
 the heaviest charge against the Romish Pontificate 
 was, that the Italian politics and Nepotism of a 
 series of Popes had converted so great a good into 
 an intolerable grievance. We were reminded, that 
 
156 . 
 
 Grotius and Leibnitz had regarded a visible 
 head of the Catholic church as most desirable : that 
 they, and with them more than one Primate of our 
 own church, yearned for a conciliating settlement of 
 the differences between the Romish and Protestant 
 churches ; and mainly in order that there might 
 exist really, as well as nominally, a visible head of 
 the church universal, a fixt centre of unity. Of 
 course, the tenet, that the Pope was in any sense 
 the Antichrist predicted by Paul, was decried as 
 fanatical and puritanical cant. 
 
 Now it is a duty of Christian charity to presume, 
 that the men, who in the present day employ this 
 language, are, or believe themselves to be, Chris- 
 tians : and that they do not privately think that 
 St. Paul, in the two celebrated passages of his First 
 and Second Epistles to the Church of Thessalonica, 
 (1. iv., 13 — 18; 11 ii. 1 — 12), practised a ruse de 
 guerre, and meant only by throwing the fulfilment 
 beyond the life of the present generation, and by a 
 terrific detail of the horrors and calamities that were 
 to precede it, to damp the impatience, and silence 
 the objections, excited by the expectation and the 
 delay of our Lord's personal re-appearance. Again : 
 
157 
 
 as the persons, of whom we have been speaking, are 
 well educated men, and men of sober minds, we may 
 safely take for gianted, that they do not understand 
 by Antichrist any nondescript monster, or suppose it 
 to be the proper name or designation of some one 2,fd~~ *>?. 
 individual man or devil exclusively. The Christians 
 of the second century, sharing in a delusion that 
 prevailed over the whole Roman Empire, believed 
 that Nero would come to life again, and be Anti- 
 christ : and I have been informed, that a learned 
 clergyman of our own times, endowed with the gift 
 of prophecy by assiduous study of Daniel, and the 
 Apocalypse, asserts the same thing of Napoleon 
 Bonaparte. 
 
 But, as before said, it would be calumnious to 
 attribute such pitiable fanaticism to the parties here 
 in question. And to them I venture to affirm, that 
 if by Antichrist be meant — what alone can rationally 
 be meant — a power in the Christian church, which in 
 the name of Christ, and at once pretending and 
 usurping his authority, is systematically subversive 
 of the essential and distinguishing characters and 
 purposes of the Christian church : that then, if the 
 papacy, and the Romish Hierarchy as far as it is 
 
158 
 papal, be not Antichrist, the guilt of schism, in its 
 most aggravated form, lies on the authors of the 
 Reformation. For nothing less than this could have 
 justified so tremendous a rent in the Catholic 
 church, with all its foreseen most calamitous conse- 
 quences. And so Luther himself thought ; and so 
 thought Wickliffe before him. Only in the convic- 
 tion that Christianity itself was at stake ; that 
 the cause was that of Christ in conflict with 
 Antichrist ; could, or did even the lion-hearted 
 Luther with unquailed spirit avow to himself: I 
 bring not peace, but a sword into the world. 
 
 It is my full conviction, a conviction formed after 
 a long and patient study of the subject in detail ; 
 /and if the author in support of this competence 
 only added that he has read, and with care, the 
 Summa Theologise of Aquinas, and compared the 
 system with the statements of Arnold and Bossuet, 
 the number of those who in the present much-reading, 
 but not very hard-reading age, would feel themselves 
 entitled to dispute his claim, will not, perhaps, be 
 very formidable -J 
 
 It is, I repeat, my full conviction, that the rites 
 and doctrines, the agenda et credenda, of the Ca- 
 
159 
 
 tholics, could we separate them from the adulte- 
 rating ingredients combined with, and the use 
 made of them, by the sacerdotal Mamelukes of the 
 Romish monarchy, for the support of the Papacy 
 and papal hierarchy, would neither have brought 
 about, nor have sufficed to justify, the convulsive 
 separation under Leo X. Nay, that if they were 
 fairly, and in the light of a sound philosophy, 
 compared with either of the two main divisions of 
 Protestantism, as it now exists in this country, i. e. 
 with the fashionable doctrines and interpretations of 
 the Armenian and Grotian school on the one hand, 
 and with the tenets and language of the modern 
 Calvinists on the other, an enlightened disciple of 
 John and of Paul would be perplexed, which of 
 the three to prefer as the least unlike the profound 
 and sublime system, he had learnt from his great 
 masters. And in this comparison I leave out of 
 view the extreme sects of Protestantism, whether 
 of the Frigid or of the Torrid Zone, Socinian or 
 fanatic. 
 
 During the summer of last year, I made the tour 
 of Holland, Flanders, and up the Rhine as far as 
 Bergen, and among the few notes then taken, I 
 
160 
 
 find the following : — " Every fresh opportunity of 
 examining the Roman Catholic religion on the spot, 
 every new fact that presents itself to my notice, 
 increases my conviction, that its immediate basis, 
 and the true grounds of its continuance, are to be 
 found in the wickedness, ignorance, and wretched- 
 ness of the many; and that the producing and 
 continuing cause of this deplorable state is, that 
 it is the interest of the Romish Priesthood, that so 
 it should remain, as the surest, and in fact, only 
 support of the Papal sovereignty and influence 
 against the civil powers, and the reforms wished 
 for by the more enlightened governments, as well 
 as by all the better informed and wealthier class of 
 Catholics generally. And as parts of the same 
 policy, and equally indispensable to the interests 
 of the Triple Crown, are the ignorance, grossness, 
 excessive number and poverty of the lower Eccle- 
 siastics themselves, including the religious orders. 
 N. B. — When I say the Pope, I understand the 
 papal hierarchy, which is, in truth, the dilated 
 Pope : and in this sense only, and not of the indivi- 
 dual Priest or Friar at Rome, can a wise man be sup- 
 posed to use the word." — Cologne, July 2, 1828. 
 
161 
 
 I feel it as no small comfort and confirmation, 
 to know that the same view of the subject is taken, 
 the same conviction entertained, by a large and 
 increasing number in the Catholic communion itself, 
 in Germany, France, Italy, and even in Spain : 
 and that no inconsiderable portion of this number 
 consists of men who are not only pious as Christians, 
 but zealous as Catholics ; and who would contem- 
 plate with as much horror a Reform from their 
 Church, as they look with earnest aspirations and 
 desires toward a Reform in the Church. Proof of 
 this may be found in the learned work, intitled 
 " Disordini morali et politici della Corte di Roma," — ■ 
 evidently the work of a zealous Catholic, and from 
 the ecclesiastical erudition displayed in the volumes, 
 probably a Catholic priest. Nay, from the angry 
 aversion with which the foul heresies of those sons 
 of perdition, Luther and Calvin, are mentioned, and 
 his very faint and qualified censure of the perse- 
 cution of the Albigenses and Waldenses, I am 
 obliged to infer, that the writer's attachment to 
 his communion was zealous even to bigotry ! 
 The disorders denounced by him are : — 
 I. The pretension of the Papacy to temporal 
 
 M 
 
162 
 
 power and sovereignty, directly or as the pre- 
 tended consequence of spiritual dominion : and 
 as furnishing occasion to this, even the retention 
 of the primacy in honour over all other bishops, after 
 Rome had ceased to be the metropolis of Christen- 
 dom, is noticed as a subject of regret. 
 
 2. The boast of papal infallibility. 
 
 3. The derivation of the Episcopal Power from 
 the Papal, and the dependence of Bishops on the 
 Pope, rightly named the evil of a false centre. 
 
 4. The right of exercising authority in other 
 dioceses, besides that of Rome. 
 
 5. The privilege of reserving to himself the 
 greater causes — le cause maggiori. 
 
 6. 7, 8, 9, 10. Of conferring any and every 
 benefice in the territory of other bishops ; of exact- 
 ing the Annates, or First Fruits; of receiving 
 appeals ; with the power of subjecting all churches 
 in all parts, to the ecclesiastical discipline of the 
 church of Rome ; and lastly, the dispensing Power 
 of the Pope. 
 
 1 1 . The Pope's pretended superiority to an Ecu- 
 menical Council. 
 
 12. The exclusive power of canonizing Saints. 
 
163 
 
 Now, of the twelve abuses here enumerated, it 
 is remarkable that ten, if not eleven, are but ex- 
 pansions of the one grievance — the Papal Power as 
 the centre, and the Pope as the one visible head and 
 sovereign of the Christian church. 
 
 The writer next enumerates the personal Instru- 
 ments, &c. of these abuses : viz. — 1. The Cardinals. 
 2. The excessive number of the Priests and other 
 Ecclesiastics. 3. The Regulars, Mendicant Orders, 
 Jesuits, &c. 
 
 Lastly : the means employed by the Papacy to 
 found and preserve its usurped power, namely : — 
 
 I. The institution of a Chair of Canon Law, in 
 the university of Bologna, the introduction of Gra- 
 tian's Canons, and the forged decisions, &c. 2. 
 The prohibition of books, wherever published. 3. 
 The Inquisition. 4. The tremendous power of 
 Excommunication. The two last in their temporal 
 inflictions and consequences equalling, or rather 
 greatly exceeding, the utmost extent of the punitive 
 power exercised by the temporal sovereign and the 
 civil magistrate, armed with the sword of the cri- 
 minal law. 
 
 It is observable, that the most efficient of all the 
 m 2 
 
164 
 
 means adopted by the Roman Pontiffs, viz. — The 
 Celibacy of the Clergy, is omitted by this 
 writer : a sufficient proof that he was neither a 
 Protestant nor a Philosopher, which in the Italian 
 states, and, indeed, in most Catholic Countries, is 
 the name of Courtesy for an Infidel. 
 
 One other remark in justification of the tenet 
 avowed in this chapter, and I shall have said all I 
 deem it necessary to say, on the third form of a 
 Church. That erection of a temporal monarch under 
 the pretence of a spiritual authority, which was not 
 possible in Christendom but by the extinction or 
 entrancement of the spirit of Christianity, and 
 which has therefore been only partially attained by 
 the Papacy — this was effected in full by Mahomet, 
 to the establishment of the most extensive and 
 complete despotism, that ever warred against civili- 
 zation and the interests of humanity. And had 
 Mahomet retained the name of Christianity, had he 
 deduced his authority from Christ, as his Principal, 
 and described his own Caliphate and that of his 
 successors as vicarious, there can be no doubt, that 
 to the Mussulman Theocracy, embodied in the 
 different Mahometan dynasties, would belong the 
 
165 
 
 name and attributes of Antichrist. But the Pro- 
 phet of Arabia started out of Paganism an unbap- 
 tized Pagan. He was no traitor in the church, but 
 an enemy from without, who levied war against its 
 outward and formal existence, and is, therefore, not 
 chargeable with apostacy from a faith, he had never 
 acknowledged, or from a church to which he had 
 never appertained. Neither in the Prophet nor in 
 his system, therefore, can we find the predicted 
 Anti-Christ, i. e. a usurped power in the church 
 itself, which, in the name of Christ, and pretending 
 his authority, systematically subverts or counteracts 
 the peculiar aims and purposes of Christ's mission ; 
 and which, vesting in a mortal his incommunicable 
 headship, destroys (and exchanges for the contrary) 
 the essential contra-distinguishing marks or cha- 
 racters of his kingdom on earth. But apply it, as 
 Wickliffe, Luther,* and indeed all the first Reformers 
 
 * And (be it observed) without any reference to the Apoca- 
 lypse, the canonical character of which Luther at first rejected, 
 and never cordially received. And(without the least sympathy 
 with Luther's suspicions ou this head, but on the contrary 
 receiving this sublime poem as the undoubted work of the Apos- 
 tolic age, and admiring in it the- most perfect specimen of 
 symbolic poetry,) I am as little disposed to cite it on the present 
 
166 
 
 did to the Papacy, and Papal Hierarchy ; and we 
 understand at once the grounds of the great apostle's 
 premonition, that this Antichrist could not appear 
 
 occasion — convinced as I am and hope shortly to convince 
 others, that in the whole series of its magnificent imagery there 
 is not a single symbol, that can be even plausibly interpreted of 
 either the Pope, the Turks, or Napoleon Buonaparte. Of charges 
 not attaching to the moral character, there are few, if any, that I 
 should be more anxious to avoid than that of being an affecter 
 of paradoxes. But the dread of other men's thoughts shall not 
 tempt me to withhold a truth, which the strange errors grounded 
 on the contrary assumption render important. And in the 
 thorough assurance of its truth I make the assertion, that the 
 perspicuity, and (with singularly few exceptions even for us) the 
 nniform intelligibility, and close consecutive meaning, verse by 
 verse, with the simplicity and grandeur of the plan, and the 
 admirable ordonnance of the parts, are among the prominent 
 beauties of the Apocalypse. Nor do I doubt, that the substance 
 and main argument of this sacred oratorio, or drama sui generis 
 (the Prometheus of Eschylus comes the nearest to the kind) 
 were supplied by John the Evangelist: though I incline with 
 Eusebius to find the poet himself in John, an Elder and Contem- 
 porary of the Church of Ephesus. 
 
 P. S. — It may remove, or at least mitigate the objections to 
 the palliative language, in which I have spoken of the doctrines 
 of the Catholic Church, if I remind the Reader that the Roman 
 Catholic Church dates its true origin from the Council of Trent. 
 Widely differing from my valued and affectionately respected 
 friend, the Rev. Edward Irving, in his interpretations of the 
 Apocalypse and the Book of Daniel, and no less in his estimation 
 of the latter, and while I honour his courage, as a Christian 
 minister, almost as much as I admire his eloquence as a writer, 
 
167 
 
 till after the dissolution of the Latin empire, and the 
 extinction of the Imperial Power in Rome — and the 
 cause why the Bishop of Constantinople, with all 
 
 yet protesting against his somewhat too adventurous speculations 
 on the Persons of the Trinity and the Body of our Lord — I have 
 great delight in extracting (from his " Sermons, Lectures, and 
 Discourses," vol. iii. p. 870j and declaring my cordial assent to, 
 the following just observations: viz. — that after the Reformation 
 had taken firm root, and when God had provided a purer 
 Church, the Council of Trent did corroborate and decree into 
 unalterable laws and constitutions of the Church all those im- 
 postures and innovations of the Roman See, which had been in 
 a state of uncertainty, perhaps of permission or even of custom ; 
 but which every man had till then been free to testify against, 
 and against which, in fact, there never wanted those in each 
 successive generation who did testify. The Council of Trent 
 ossified all those ulcers and blotchers which had deformed the 
 Church, and stamped the hitherto much doubted and contro- 
 verted prerogative of the Pope with the highest authority 
 recognized in the Church." Then first was the Catholic con- 
 verted and particularized into the Romish Church, the Church 
 of the Papacy. 
 
 No less cordially do I concur with Mr. Irving in his remark in 
 the following page. For I too, " am free to confess and avow 
 moreover, that I believe the soil of the Catholic Church, when 
 Luther arose, was of a stronger mould, fitted to bear forest trees 
 and cedars of God, than the soil of the Protestant Church in the 
 times of Whitfield and Wesley, which (though sown with the same 
 word—? qu.) hath brought forth only stunted undergrowths, and 
 creeping brushwood." I too, " believe, that the faith of the 
 Protestant Church in Britain had come to a lower ebb, and 
 that it is even now at a lower ebb, than was the faith of the 
 
168 
 
 imaginable good wishes and disposition to do the 
 same, could never raise the Patriarchate of the 
 Greek empire into a Papacy. The bishops of the 
 
 Papal Church when the Spirit of the Lord was able to quicken 
 in it and draw forth of it, such men as Luther, and Melancthon, 
 and Bullenger, Calviu, Bucer, and Latimer, and Ridley, and a 
 score others whom I might name." 
 
 And now, as the conclusion of this long note, let me be per- 
 mitted to add a word or two of Edward Irving himself. That he 
 possesses my unqualified esteem as a man, is only' saying, that I 
 know him, and am neither blinded by envy nor bigotry. But my 
 name has been brought into connexion with his, on points that 
 regard his public ministry : and he himself has publicly distin- 
 guished me as his friend, on public grounds : and in proof of my 
 confidence in his regard, I have not the least apprehension of for- 
 feiting it by a frank declaration of what I think. Well, then ! I 
 have no faith in his prophesyings ; small sympathy with his ful- 
 minations; and in certain peculiarities of his theological system, 
 as distinct from his religious principles, I cannot see my way. 
 But I hold withal, and not the less firmly for these discrepancies 
 in our moods and judgments, that Edward Irving possesses 
 more of the spirit and purposes of the first Reformers, that he 
 has more of the Head and Heart, the Life, the Unction, and the 
 genial power of Martin Luther, than any man now alive: 
 yea, than any man of this and the last century. [ see in 
 Edward Irving a minister of Christ after the order of Paul ; 
 and if the points, in which I think him either erroneous, or 
 excessive and out of bounds, have been at any time a subject of 
 serious regret with me, this regret has arisen principally or 
 altogether from the apprehension of their narrowing the sphere of 
 his influence, from the too great probability that they may fur- 
 nish occasion or pretext for withholding or withdrawing many 
 
169 
 other Rome became the slaves of the Ottoman, the 
 moment they ceased to be the subjects of the 
 Emperor. 
 
 from those momentous truths, which the age especially needs, 
 and for the enforcement of which he hath been so highly and 
 especially gifted ! Finally, my friend's intellect is too instinct 
 with life, too potential to remain stationary : and assuming, as 
 every satisfied believer must be supposed to do, the truth of my 
 own views, I look forward with confident hope to a time, when 
 his soul shall have perfected her victory over the dead letter of 
 the senses and its apparitions in the sensuous understanding ; 
 when the Halcyon Ideas shall have alit on the surging sea of his 
 conceptions, 
 
 " Which then shall quite forget to rave, 
 While Birds of Calm sit brooding on the charmed wave." 
 
 Milton. 
 
 But to return from the Personal, for which I have little taste 
 at any time, and the contrary when it stands in any connection 
 with myself in order to the removal of one main impe- 
 diment to the spiritual resuscitation of Protestantism, it seems to 
 me indispensable, that in freedom and unfearing faith, with that 
 courage which cannot but flow from the inward and life-like as- 
 surance, " that neither death, nor things present nor things to 
 come, nor heighth, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be 
 able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ 
 Jesus our Lord " — (Rom. viii. 38, 39) — the rulers of our Churches 
 and our teachers of theology should meditate and draw the 
 obvious, thougb perhaps unpalatable, inferences from the fol- 
 lowing two or three plain truths : — First, that Christ, " the Spirit 
 of Truth," has promised to be with his Church even to the end. 
 Secondly : that Christianity was described as a Tree to be raised 
 
170 
 
 We will now proceed to the Second Part, in- 
 tended as a humble aid to a just appreciation of 
 the measure, which under the auspices of Mr. Peel 
 and the Duke of Wellington is now the Law of 
 the land. This portion of the volume was written 
 while the measure was yet in prospectu ; before 
 even the particular clauses of the Bill were made 
 public. It was written to explain and vindicate 
 the author's refusal to sign a Petition against any 
 change in the scheme of Law and Policy esta- 
 blished at the Revolution. But as the arguments 
 
 from the Seed, so described by Him who brought the seed from 
 Heaven and first sowed it. Lastly : that in the process of Evo- 
 lution, there are in every plant growths of transitory use and 
 duration. "The integuments of the seed, having fulfilled their 
 destined office of protection, burst and decay. After the leaves 
 have unfolded, the Colyledons, that had performed their func- 
 tions, wither and drop off."* The husk is a genuine growth 
 of "The Staff of Life:" yet we must separate it from the grain. 
 It is, therefore, the cowardice of faithless superstition, if we 
 stand in greater awe of the palpable interpolations of vermin ; if 
 we shrink from the removal of excrescences that contain nothing 
 of nobler parentage than maggots of moth or chafer. Let us 
 cease to confound oak-apples with acorns : still less, though gilded 
 by the fashion of the day, let us mistake them for Golden Pippins 
 or Renates.f 
 
 * Smith's Introduction to Botany. 
 t The fruit from a Pippin grafted on a Pippin, is called a Rennet, t. e., 
 Renate (re-narus) or twice-born. 
 
171 
 
 are in no respect affected by this circumstance, 
 nay, as their constant reference to, and dependence 
 on, one fixed General Principle, which will at 
 once explain both why the author finds the actual 
 Bill so much less objectionable than he had feared, 
 and yet so much less complete and satisfactory 
 than he had wished, will be rendered more striking 
 by the reader's consciousness that the arguments 
 were suggested by no wish or purpose either of 
 attacking or supporting any particular measure : 
 it has not been thought necessary or advisable to 
 alter the form. Nay, if the author be right in his 
 judgment, that the Bill lately passed, if charac- 
 terized by its own contents and capabilities, really 
 is — with or without any such intention on the 
 part of its framers — a Stepping-stone, and 
 nothing more : whether to the subversion or to 
 the more perfect establishment of the Constitution 
 in Church and State, must be determined by 
 other causes ; the Bill in itself is equally fit for 
 either — Tros Tyriusve, it offers the same facilities 
 of transit to both, though with a foreclosure to 
 the first comer. — If this be a right, as it is the 
 
172 
 
 author's sincere judgment and belief, there is a 
 propriety in retaining the language of anticipation. 
 Mons adhuc parturit: the " ridiculus Mus" was 
 but an omen. 
 
SECOND PART: 
 
 OR, 
 
 AIDS TO A RIGHT APPRECIATION 
 
 THE BILL 
 
 ADMITTING CATHOLICS TO SIT IN BOTH HOUSES OF 
 PARLIAMENT, &c. &c. 
 
A'/ueAei, jxa, rhv At' ovk ivacnndcixrofj.aL' 
 Ae|&) y virep 'Erepoyvwf^Svcov, 3. jaoi SoKef 
 Kal rot SeSoiKa voWd' to6s ts yap Tp6irovs 
 Tobs ^vfiiroKiTOov ZiSa xaipovras cr<p6dpa, 
 'Eav ris avrovs evXoy-ij Kal rfyv tt6\lv, 
 'Avfyp aAafav, Kai Siitaia k&Sikw 
 Kap'raiGa XavQdvoKT airefiiroXdofievoi. 
 
 'API2TO*. Axapyys. 367. 
 
175 
 
 TO A FRIEND. 
 
 Yes, Sir, I estimate the beauty and benefit of 
 what you have called " A harmony in fundamentals, 
 and a conspiration of the constituent parts of the 
 Body Politic," as highly as the sturdiest zealot 
 for the petition, which I have declined to sub- 
 scribe. If I met a man, who should deny that 
 an imperium in imperio was in itself an evil, I 
 would riot attempt to reason with him : he is 
 too ignorant. Or if, conceding this, he should 
 deny that the Romish Priesthood in Ireland does 
 in fact constitute an imperium in imperio, I yet 
 would not argue the matter with him : for he must 
 be a Bigot. But my objection to the argument 
 is, that it is nothing to the purpose. And even 
 so, with regard to the arguments grounded on 
 the dangerous errors and superstitions of the 
 Romish Church. They may be all very true ; but 
 they are nothing to the purpose. Without any 
 loss they might pair off with " the Heroes of Tra- 
 falgar and Waterloo," and " our Catholic ancestors, 
 
176 
 
 to whom we owe our Magna Charta," on the other 
 side. If the prevention of an evil were the point 
 in question, then indeed ! But the day of pre- 
 vention has long past by. The evil exists : and 
 neither rope, sword, nor sermon, neither suppres- 
 sion nor conversion, can remove it. Not that I 
 think slightingly of the last ; but even those who 
 hope more sanguinely, than I can pretend to do 
 respecting the effects ultimately to result from 
 the labours of missionaries, the dispersion of con- 
 troversial tracts, and whatever other lawful means 
 and implements it may be in our power to employ 
 — even these must admit that if the remedy could 
 cope with the magnitude and inveteracy of the 
 disease, it is wholly inadequate to the urgency 
 of the symptoms. In this instance it would be 
 no easy matter to take the horse to the water ; and 
 the rest of the proverb you know. But why do 
 I waste words ? There is and can be but one 
 question : and there is and can be but one way 
 of stating it. A great numerical majority of the 
 inhabitants of one integral part of the realm pro- 
 fess a religion hostile to that professed by the ma- 
 jority of the whole realm: and a religion, too, 
 
177 
 
 which the latter regard, and have had good reason 
 to regard, as equally hostile to liberty, and the 
 sacred rights of conscience generally. In fewer 
 words, three-fourths of His Majesty's Irish subjects 
 are Roman Catholics, with a papal priesthood, while 
 three-fourths of the sum total of His Majesty's sub- 
 jects are Protestants. This with its causes and 
 consequences is the evil. It is not in our power, 
 by any immediate or direct means, to effect its re- 
 moval. The point, therefore, to be determined is : 
 Will the measures now in contemplation be likely to 
 diminish or to aggravate it ? And to the determina- 
 tion of this point on the probabilities suggested by 
 reason and experience, I would gladly be aidant, as 
 far as my poor mite of judgment will enable me. 
 
 Let us, however, first discharge what may well 
 be deemed a debt of justice from every well edu- 
 cated Protestant to his Catholic fellow-subjects 
 of the Sister Island. . At least, let us ourselves 
 understand the true cause of the evil as it now 
 exists. To what, and to whom is the present state 
 of Ireland mainly to be attributed ? This should 
 be the question : and to this I answer aloud, that 
 it is mainly attributable to those, who during a 
 
 N 
 
178 
 
 period of little less than a whole century used as a 
 Substitute what Providence had given into their 
 hand as an Opportunity ; who chose to consider as 
 superseding the most sacred duty a code of law, 
 that can be excused only on the plea, that it ena- 
 bled them to perform it ! To the sloth and impro- 
 vidence, the weakness and wickedness of the gentry, 
 clergy, and governors of Ireland, who persevered 
 in preferring intrigue, violence, and selfish expatriation 
 to a system of preventive and remedial measures, 
 the efficacy of which had been warranted for them 
 by the whole provincial history of ancient Rome, 
 cui pacare subactos summa erat sapientia; war- 
 ranted for them by the happy results of the few ex- 
 ceptions to the contrary scheme unhappily pursued 
 by their and our ancestors. 
 
 I can imagine no work of genius that would more 
 appropriately decorate the dome or wall of a Senate 
 house, than an abstract of Irish history from the 
 landing of Strongbow to the battle of the Boyne, 
 or a yet later period, embodied in intelligible em- 
 blems — an allegorical history-piece designed in the 
 spirit of a Rubens or a Buonarroti, and with the 
 wild lights, portentous shades, and saturated colours 
 
179 
 
 of a Rembrandt, Caravaggio, and Spagnoletti. To 
 complete the great moral and political lesson by 
 the historic contrast, nothing more would be re- 
 quired, than by some equally effective means to 
 possess the mind of the spectator with the state 
 and condition of ancient Spain, at less than half a 
 century from the final conclusion of an obstinate 
 and almost unremitting conflict of two hundred 
 years by Agrippa's subjugation of the Cantabrians, 
 omnibus Hispanise populis devictis et pacatis. At 
 the breaking up of the empire, the West Goths 
 conquered the country and made division of the 
 lands. Then came eight centuries of Moorish do- 
 mination. Yet so deeply had Roman wisdom im- 
 pressed the fairest characters of the Roman mind, 
 that at this very hour, if we except a comparatively 
 insignificant portion of Arabic Derivatives, the natives 
 throughout the whole peninsula speak a language 
 less differing from the Romana Rustica, or Pro- 
 vincial Latin, of the times of Lucan and Seneca, 
 than any two of its dialects from each other. The 
 time approaches, I trust, when our political econo- 
 mists may study the science of the provincial policy 
 n 2 
 
180 
 
 of the ancients in detail, under the auspices of 
 hope, for immediate and practical purposes. In 
 my own mind I am persuaded, that the necessity 
 of the penal and precautionary statutes passed 
 under Elizabeth and the three succeeding reigns, 
 is to be found as much in the passions and pre- 
 judices of the one party, as in the dangerous dis- 
 positions of the other. The best excuse for this 
 cruel code is the imperfect knowledge and mistaken 
 maxims common to both parties. It is only to a 
 limited extent, that laws can be wiser than the nation 
 for which they are enacted. The annals of the first 
 five or six centuries of the Hebrew nation in Pales- 
 tine present an almost continued history of disobe- 
 dience, of laws broken or utterly lost sight of, of 
 maxims violated, and schemes of consummate wisdom 
 left unfulfilled. Even a yet diviner seed must be 
 buried and undergo an apparent corruption before — 
 at a late period — it shot up and could appear in its 
 own kind. In our judgments respecting actions we 
 must be guided by the idea, but in applying the rule 
 to the agents, by comparison. To speak gently of 
 our forefathers is at once piety and policy. Nor let 
 
181 
 
 it be forgotten, that only by making the detection of 
 their errrors the occasion of our own wisdom, do we 
 acquire a right to censure them at all. 
 
 Whatever may be thought of the settlement that 
 followed the battle of the Boyne and the extinction 
 of the war in Ireland/ yet when this had been made 
 and submitted to, it would have been the far wiser 
 policy, I doubt not, to have provided for the safety 
 of the Constitution by improving the quality of the 
 elective franchise, leaving the eligibility open, or 
 like the former limited only by considerations of 
 property. Still, however, the scheme of exclusion 
 and disqualification had its plausible side. The 
 ink was scarcely dry on the parchment- rolls and 
 proscription-lists of the Popish parliament. The 
 crimes of the man were generalized into attributes 
 of his faith ; and the Irish Catholics collectively 
 were held accomplices in the perfidy and baseness 
 of the king. Alas ! his immediate adherents had 
 afforded too great colour to the charge. The Irish 
 massacre was in the mouth of every Protestant, 
 not as an event to be remembered, but as a thing 
 of recent expectation, fear still blending with the 
 sense of deliverance. At no time, therefore, could 
 
182 
 
 the disqualifying system have been enforced with 
 so little reclamation of the conquered party, or with 
 so little outrage on the general feeling of the country. 
 There was no time, when it was so capable of being 
 indirectly useful as a sedative, in order to the ap- 
 plication of the remedies directly indicated, or as a 
 counter-power reducing to inactivity whatever dis- 
 turbing forces might have interfered with their 
 operation. And had this use been made of these 
 exclusive laws, and had they been enforced as the 
 precursors and negative conditions, but above all 
 as bond fide accompaniments of a process of eman- 
 cipation, properly and worthily so named, the code 
 would at this day have been remembered in Ireland 
 only as when recalling a dangerous fever of our boy- 
 hood we think of the nauseous drugs and drenching- 
 horn, and congratulate ourselves, that our doctors now- 
 a-days know how to manage these things less coarsely. 
 But this angry code was neglected as an opportunity, 
 and mistaken for a substitute, et hinc illae lacrymae ! 
 
 And at this point I find myself placed again in con- 
 nection with the main question, and which I contend 
 to be the only pertinent question, viz., The evil being 
 admitted, and its immediate removal impossible, is the 
 
183 
 
 admission of Catholics into both Houses of Legisla- 
 ture likely to mitigate or to aggravate it ? And here the 
 problem is greatly narrowed by the fact, that no man 
 pretends to regard this admissibility as a direct remedy, 
 or specific antidote to the diseases under which Ireland 
 labours. No ! it is to act, we are told, as introductory 
 to the direct remedies. In short, this Emancipation is 
 to be, like the penal code which it repeals, a sedative, 
 though in the opposite form of an anodyne cordial, that 
 will itself be entitled to the name of a remedial measure 
 in proportion as it shall be found to render the body 
 susceptible of the more direct remedies that are to 
 follow. Its object is to tranquillize Ireland. Safety, 
 peace, and good neighbourhood, influx of capital, 
 diminution of absenteeism, industrious habits, and a 
 long train of blessings will follow. But the indispen- 
 sable condition, the causa causarum et causatorum, is 
 general tranquillity. Such is the language held by all 
 the more intelligent advocates and economists of 
 Emancipation. The sense of the question therefore 
 is, will the measure tend to produce tranquillity ? 
 
 Now it is evident, that there are two parties to be 
 satisfied, and that the measure is likely to effect this 
 purpose according as it is calculated to satisfy reason- 
 
184 
 
 able men of both. Reasonable men are easily satis- 
 fied : would they were as numerous as they are paca- 
 ble ! We must, however, understand the word com- 
 paratively, as including all those on both sides, who 
 by their superior information, talents, or property, are 
 least likely to be under the dominion of vulgar anti- 
 pathies, and who may be rationally expected to in- 
 fluence (and in certain cases, and in alliance with a 
 vigorous government, to over-rule) the feelings and 
 sentiments of the rest. 
 
 Now the two indispensable conditions under which 
 alone the measure can permanently satisfy the rea- 
 sonable, that is, the satisfiable, of both parties, sup- 
 posing that in both parties such men exist, and that 
 they form the influencive class in both, are these. 
 First, that the Bill for the repeal of the exclusive 
 statutes, and the admission of Catholics to the full 
 privileges of British subjects, shall be grounded on 
 some determinate Principle, which involving inte- 
 rests and duties common to both parties as British 
 subjects, both parties may be expected to recog- 
 nize, and required to maintain inviolable. Second, 
 that this principle shall contain in itself an evident 
 definite and unchangeable boundary, a line of demar- 
 
185 
 
 cation, a ne plus ultra, which in all reasonable men 
 and lovers of their country shall preclude the wish to 
 pass beyond it, and extinguish the hope of so doing 
 in such as are neither. 
 
 But though the measure should be such as to 
 satisfy all reasonable men, still it is possible that the 
 number and influence of these may not be sufficient 
 to leaven the mass, or to over-rule the agitators. I 
 admit this; but instead of weakening what I have 
 here said, it affords an additional argument in its 
 favour. For if an argument satisfactory to the rea- 
 sonable part, should nevertheless fail in securing tran- 
 quillity, still less can the result be expected from an 
 arbitrary adjustment that can satisfy no part. If a 
 measure grounded on principle, and possessing the 
 character of an ultimatum should still, through the 
 prejudices and passions of one or of both parties, fail 
 of success, it would be folly to expect it from a mea- 
 sure that left full scope and sphere to those passions ; 
 which kept alive the fears of the one party, while it 
 sharpened the cupidity of the other. With confi- 
 dence, therefore, I re-assert, that only by reference 
 to a principle, possessing the characters above enu- 
 merated, can any satisfactory measure be framed, 
 
186 
 
 and that if this should fail in producing the tran- 
 quillity aimed at, it will be in vain sought in any 
 other. 
 
 Again, it is evident that no principle can be ap- 
 propriate to such a measure, which does not bear 
 directly on the evil to be removed or mitigated. Con- 
 sequently, it should be our first business to discover 
 in what this evil truly and essentially consists. It is, 
 we know, a compound of many ingredients. But we 
 want to ascertain what the base is, that communicates 
 the quality of evil, of political evil, of evil which it is 
 the duty of a statesman to guard against, to various 
 other ingredients, which without the base would have 
 been innoxious : or though evils in themselves, yet 
 evils of such a kind, as to be counted by all wise states- 
 men among the tares, which must be suffered to grow 
 up with the wheat to the close of the harvest, and 
 left for the Lord of the Harvest to separate. 
 
 Further : the Principle, the grounding and direct- 
 ing Principle of an effectual enactment, must be one, 
 on which a Catholic might consistently vindicate and 
 recommend the measure to Catholics. It must 
 therefore be independent of all differences purely 
 theological. And the facts and documents, by which 
 
187 
 
 the truth and practical importance of the principle 
 are to be proved or illustrated, should be taken by 
 preference from periods anterior to the division of 
 the Latin Church into Romish and Protestant. It 
 should be such, in short, that an orator might with 
 strict historical propriety introduce the Framers and 
 Extorters of Magna Charta pleading to their Catholic 
 descendants in behalf of the measure grounded on 
 such a Principle,, and invoking them in the name 
 of the Constitution, over whose growth they had 
 kept armed watch, and by the sacred obligation 
 to maintain it which they had entailed on their 
 posterity. 
 
 This is the condition under which alone I could 
 conscientiously vote, and which being fulfilled, I 
 should most zealously vote for the admission of Lay 
 Catholics, not only to both houses of the Legislature, 
 but to all other offices below the Crown, without 
 any exception. Moreover, in the fulfilment of this 
 condition, in the solemn recognition and establish- 
 ment of a Principle having the characters here spe- 
 cified, I find the only necessary security — convinced, 
 that this, if acceded to by the Catholic Body, would 
 in effect be such, and that any other security will 
 
188 
 
 either be hollow, or frustrate the purpose of the Bill. 
 
 Now this condition would be fulfilled, the required 
 
 Principle would be given, provided that the law for 
 
 I the repeal of the sundry statutes affecting the Catho- 
 
 l lies were introduced by, and grounded on, a declar- 
 
 7 
 
 ation, to which every possible character of solemnity 
 ) should be given, that at no time and under no circum- 
 ( stances has it ever been, nor can it ever be, compatible 
 < with the spirit or consistent with safety of the British 
 ( Constitution, to recognize in the Roman Catholic 
 I Priesthood, as now constituted, a component Estate 
 1 of the Realm, or persons capable, individually or 
 ; collectively, of becoming the Trustees and usufruc- 
 [ tuary Proprietors of that elective. and circulative 
 property, originally reserved for the permanent 
 I maintenance of the National Church. And further, 
 it is expedient, that the Preamble of the Bill 
 should expressly declare and set forth, that this 
 . exclusion of the Members of the Romish Priest- 
 hood (comprehending all under oaths of canonical 
 obedience to the Pope as their ecclesiastical sovereign) 
 from the trusts and offices of the National Church, 
 and from all participation in the proceeds of the 
 Nationalty, is enacted and established on grounds 
 
189 
 
 '( wholly irrelative to any doctrines received and 
 ( taught by the Romish Church as Articles of Faith, 
 ) and protested against as such by the Churches of 
 the Reformation ; but that it is enacted on grounds 
 [ derived and inherited from our ancestors before 
 ( the Reformation, and by them maintained and 
 ( enforced to the fullest extent that the circumstan- 
 ces of the times permitted, with no other exceptions 
 and interruptions than those effected by fraud, or 
 usurpation, or foreign force, or the temporary fanati- 
 i cism of the meaner sort. In what manner the enact- 
 ment of this principle shall be effected, is of compara- 
 tively small importance, provided it be distinctly set 
 forth as that great constitutional security, the known 
 existence of which is the ground and condition of the 
 right of the Legislature to dispense with the other 
 less essential safe-guards of the constitution, not 
 unnecessary, perhaps, at the time oi their enactment, 
 but of temporary and accidental necessity. The 
 form, I repeat, the particular mode in which the 
 principle shall be recognized, the security established, 
 is comparatively indifferent. Let it only be under- 
 stood first, as the provision, by the retention of which 
 the Legislature possess a moral and constitutional 
 
190 
 
 right to make the change in question, as that the 
 known existence of which permits the law to ignore 
 the Roman Catholics under any other name than that 
 of British subjects ; and secondly, as the express 
 condition, the basis of a virtual compact between the 
 claimants and the nation, which condition cannot be 
 broken or evaded without subverting (morally) the 
 articles and clauses founded thereon. 
 
 N. B. — I do not assert that the provision here 
 stated is an absolute security. My positions are, — 
 first, that it may with better reason and more pro- 
 bability be proposed as such, than any other hitherto 
 devised ; secondly, that no other securities can super- 
 sede the expediency and necessity of this, but that 
 this will greatly diminish or altogether remove the 
 necessity of any other: further, that without this, 
 the present measure cannot be rationally expected to 
 produce that tranquillity, which it is the aim and 
 object of the framers to bring about; and lastly, that 
 the necessity of the declaration, as above given, for- 
 mally and solemnly to be made and recorded, is not 
 evacuated by this pretext, that no one intends to 
 transfer the Church Establishment to the Romish 
 Priesthood, or to divide it with them. One thing, 
 
191 
 however, is of importance, that I should premise — 
 namely, that the existing state of the Elective Fran- 
 chise # in Ireland, in reference to the fatal present 
 of the Union Ministry to the Landed Interest, that 
 true Deianira Shirt of the Irish Hercules, is alto- 
 gether excluded from the theme and purpose of this 
 disquisition. It ought to be considered by the 
 Legislature, abstracted from the creed professed by 
 the great majority of these nominal Freeholders. 
 The recent abuse of the influence resulting from this 
 profession, should be regarded as an accidental 
 aggravation of the mischief, that displayed rather 
 than constituted its malignity. It is even desirable, 
 that it should be preserved separate from the Catho- 
 lic Question, and in no necessary dependance on the 
 fate of the Bill now on the eve of presentation to 
 Parliament. Whether this be carried or be lost, it 
 will still remain a momentous question, urgently 
 calling for the decision of the Legislature — whether 
 
 * Though by the Bill which is now Law, the Forty Shilling 
 Freeholders no longer possess the elective franchise, yet as this 
 particular clause of the Bill already has been, and may hereafter be, 
 made a pretext for agitation, the following paragraph has been re- 
 tained, in the belief, that its moral uses have not been altogether 
 superseded by the retractation of this most unhappy boon. 
 
192 
 
 the said extension of the elective franchise has not 
 introduced an uncombining and wholly incongruous 
 ingredient into the representative system, irrecon- 
 cilable with the true principle of election, and vir- 
 tually disfranchising the class, to whom, on every 
 ground of justice and of policy, the right unques- 
 tionably belongs — under any circumstances over- 
 whelming the voices of the rest of the commu- 
 nity ; in ordinary times concentering in the great 
 Land-owners a virtual monopoly of the elective 
 power; and in time's of factious excitement de- 
 priving them even of their natural and rightful 
 influence. 
 
 These few suggestions on the expediency of revis- 
 ing the state of the representation in Ireland are, I 
 am aware, but a digression from the main subject of 
 the Chapter. But this in fact is already completed, 
 as far as my purpose is concerned. The reasons, on 
 which the necessity of the proposed declaration is 
 grounded, have- been given at large in the former 
 part of the volume. Here, therefore, I should end ; 
 but that I anticipate two objections, of sufficient force 
 to deserve a comment, and form the matter of a con- 
 cluding paragraph. 
 
193 
 
 First, it may be objected, that after abstracting 
 the portion of evil, that may be plausibly attributed 
 to the peculiar state of landed property in Ireland, 
 there are evils directly resulting from the Romanism 
 of the most numerous class of the Inhabitants, 
 besides that of an extra-national priesthood, and 
 against the political consequences of which the 
 above declaration provides no security. To this I 
 reply, that as no bridge ever did or can possess the 
 demonstrable perfections of the mathematical arch, 
 so can no existing state adequately correspond 
 to the idea of a state. Tn nations and governments 
 the most happily constituted, there wall be defor- 
 mities and obstructions, peccant humours and irre- 
 gular actions, which affect indeed the perfection 
 of the state, but not its essential forms ; which 
 retard, but do not necessarily prevent its progress : 
 casual disorders, which though they aggravate the 
 growing pains of a nation, may yet, by the vigorous 
 counteraction which they excite, even promote its 
 growth. Inflammations in the extremities, and un- 
 seemly boils on the surface dare not be confounded 
 with exhaustive misgrowths, or the poison of a false 
 life in the vital organs. Nay — and this remark is 
 
 o 
 
194 
 
 of special pertinency to our present purpose — even 
 where the former derive a malignant character from 
 their co-existence with the latter, yet the wise phy- 
 sician will direct his whole attention to the consti- 
 tutional ailments, knowing that when the source, 
 the fons et fomes veneni, is sealed up, the acces-r 
 sories will either dry up of themselves, or, returning 
 to their natural character rank among the infir- 
 mities, which flesh is heir to ; and either admit 
 of a gradual remedy, or where this is impractica- 
 ble, or when the medicine would be worse than 
 the disease, are to be endured, as tolerabiles ineptiae, 
 trials of patience, and occasions of charity. We 
 have here had the state chiefly in view; but the 
 Protestant will to little purpose have availed him- 
 self of his free access to the Scriptures, will have 
 read at least the Epistles of St. Paul with a very 
 unthinking spirit, who does not apply the same 
 maxims to the church of Christ, who has yet to 
 learn, that the church militant is " a floor whereon 
 wheat and chaff are mingled together ;" that even 
 grievous evils and errors may exist that do not 
 concern the nature or being of a church, and that 
 may even prevail in the particular church, to which 
 
195 
 
 we belong, without justifying a separation from the 
 same, and without invalidating its claims on our 
 affection as a true and living part of the Church 
 Universal. And with regard to such evils we must 
 adopt the advice that Augustine (a man not apt 
 to offend by any excess of charity) gave to the 
 complainers of his day — ut misericorditer corripiant 
 quod possunt, quod non possunt patienter ferant, 
 et cum delectione lugeant, donee aut emendet Deus 
 aut in messe eradicet zizania et paleas ventilet. 
 
 Secondly, it may be objected that the declaration 
 so peremptorily by me required is altogether un- 
 necessary, that no one thinks of alienating the 
 church property, directly or indirectly, that there is 
 no intention of recognising the Romish Priests in 
 law, by entitling them, as such, to national main- 
 tenance, or in the language of the day, by taking 
 them into the pay of the state. In short, that the 
 National Church is no more in danger than the 
 Christian. And is this the opinion, the settled 
 judgment, of one who has studied the signs of 
 the times? Can the person who makes these asser- 
 tions, have ever read a pamphlet by Mr. Secretary 
 o2 
 
196 
 
 Croker ? Or the surveys oT the Counties, published 
 under the authority of the now extinct Board of 
 Agriculture? Or has he heard, or attentively pe- 
 rused the successive debates in both Houses during 
 the late agitation of the Catholic Question? If he 
 have — why then, relatively to the objector, and 
 to as many as entertain the same opinions, my 
 reply is: — the objection is unanswerable. 
 
197 
 
 GLOSSARY 
 
 TO THE APPENDED LETTER. 
 
 As all my readers are not bound to understand 
 Greek, and yet, according to my deepest convictions, 
 the truths set forth in the following Combat of Wit be- 
 tween the Man of Reason and the Man of the Senses 
 have an interest for all, I have been induced to prefix 
 the explanations of the, few Greek words, and words 
 minted from the Greek : 
 
 Cosmos — world. Toutos cosmos — this world. 
 Heteros — the other, in the sense of opposition to, 
 or discrepancy with some former ; as Heterodoxy, in 
 opposition to Orthodoxy. Allos —an other, simply 
 and without precluding or superseding the one 
 before mentioned. Allocosmite — a Denizen of 
 another world. 
 
 Mystes, from the Greek *"*» — one who muses 
 with closed lips, as meditating on Ideas which may 
 
198 
 
 indeed be suggested and awakened, but cannot, like 
 the images of sense and the conceptions of the 
 understanding, be adequately expressed, by words. 
 
 N. B. — Where a person mistakes the anomalous 
 misgrowths of his own individuality for ideas, or 
 truths of universal reason, he may, without impro- 
 priety, be called a Mystic, in the abusive sense of 
 the term ; though pseudo-mystic, or phantast, would 
 be the more proper designation. Heraclitus, Plato, 
 Bacon, Leibnitz, were Mystics, in the primary sense of 
 the term : Tamblichus, and his successors, Phantasts. 
 
 Eireafyovra — living words. — The following words from 
 ■kit's' Plato may be Englished: " the commune and the 
 dialect of Gods with, or toward men;" and those 
 attributed to Pythagoras : " the verily subsistent num- 
 bers or powers, the most prescient (or provident) prin- 
 ciples of the Earth and the Heavens." 
 
 And here, though not falling under the leading 
 title, Glossary, yet, as tending to the same object, 
 that of fore-arming the reader for the following 
 dialogue, I transcribe two or three annotations, 
 which I had penciled, (for the book was lent me by 
 a friend who had himself borrowed it), on the margins 
 of a volume, recently published, and entitled, " The 
 
199 
 
 Natural History of Enthusiasm." They will, at least, 
 remind some of my old school-fellows of the habit, 
 for which I was even then noted : and for others they 
 may serve, as a specimen of the Marginalia, which, 
 if brought, together from the various books, my own 
 and those of a score others, would go near to form as 
 bulky a volume as most of those old folios, through 
 which the larger portion of them are dispersed. 
 
 History or Enthusiasm. 
 
 I. 
 
 " Whatever is practically important on religion 
 or morals, may at all times be advanced and argued 
 in the simplest terms of colloquial expression." — p.21 . 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 I do not believe this. Be it so, however. But 
 why ? Simply, because the terms and phrases of the 
 Theological Schools have, by their continual iter- 
 ation from the pulpit, become colloquial. The science 
 of one age becomes the common sense of a succeed- 
 ing. — See Aids to Reflection, pp. 7 — 11 ; but espe- 
 cially the note at p. 252.) The author adds—" from 
 the pulpit, perhaps, no other style should at any 
 
200 
 
 time be heard." Now I can conceive no more 
 direct means of depriving Christianity of one of its 
 peculiar attributes, that of enriching and enlarging 
 the mind, while it purifies, and in the very act of 
 purifying, the will and affections, than the maxim 
 here prescribed by the historian of Enthusiasm. 
 From the intensity of commercial life in this country, 
 and from some other less creditable causes, there is 
 found even among our better educated men, a vague- 
 ness in the use of words, which presents, indeed, no 
 obstacle to the intercourse of the market, but is 
 absolutely incompatible with the attainment or com- 
 munication of distinct and precise conceptions. 
 Hence in every department of exact knowledge, a pe- 
 culiar nomenclature is indispensable. The Anatomist, 
 Chemist, Botanist, Mineralogist, yea, even the com- 
 mon Artizan, and the rude Sailor, discover that " the 
 terms of colloquial expression," are too general and 
 too lax to answer their purposes : and on what 
 grounds can the science of self-knowledge, and of 
 our relations to God and our own spirits, be pre- 
 sumed to form an exception ? Every new term ex- 
 pressing a fact, or a difference, not precisely and 
 adequately expressed by any other word in the same 
 
201 
 
 language, is a new organ of thought for the mind 
 that has learnt it. 
 
 II. 
 
 " The region of abstract conceptions, of lofty rea- 
 sonings, has an atmosphere too subtle to support the 
 health of true piety." — In accordance with this, the 
 Supreme in his word reveals barely a glimpse of his 
 essential glories. By some naked affirmations we 
 are, indeed, secured against grovelling notions of 
 the divine nature; but these hints are incidental, and 
 so scanty, that every excursive mind goes far beyond 
 them in its conception of the Infinite Attributes." — 
 p. 26. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 By abstract conceptions the author means what I 
 should call Ideas, and as such contradistinguish 
 from conceptions, whether abstracted or generalized. 
 But it is with his meaning, not with his terms, that 
 I ana at present concerned. Now that the person eity 
 of God, the idea of God as the I am, is presented 
 more prominently in Scripture, than the (so called) 
 physical attributes, is most true ; and forms one of 
 
202 
 
 the distinctive characters of its superior worth and 
 value. It was by dwelling too exclusively on the 
 Infinities, that the ancient Greek Philosophers, 
 Plato excepted, fell into Pantheism, as in later 
 times did Spinosa. / forbid you, says Plato, to call 
 God the Infinite! If you dare name him at all, say 
 rather the Measure of Infinity. Nevertheless, it would 
 be easy to place in synopsi before the author such a 
 series of Scripture passages, as would incline him to 
 retract his assertion. The Eternal, the Omnipresent, 
 the Omniscient, the one absolute Good, the Holy, the 
 Living, the Creator as well as Former of the Uni- 
 verse, the Father of Spirits — can the author's mind 
 go far beyond these ? Yet these are all clearly 
 affirmed of the Supreme One in the Scriptures. 
 
 III. 
 
 The following pages from p. 26 to p. 36 contain a 
 succession of eloquent and splendid paragraphs on 
 the celestial orders, and the expediency or necessity 
 of their being concealed from us, least we should 
 receive such overwhelming conceptions of the divine 
 greatness as to render us incapable of devotion and 
 prayer on the Scripture model. " Were it," says 
 
203 
 
 the eloquent writer, " indeed permitted to man to 
 gaze upwards from step to step, and from range to 
 range of these celestial hierarchies, to the lowest 
 steps of the Eternal Throne, what liberty of heart 
 would afterwards be left him in drawing near to the 
 Father of Spirits?" But the substance of these 
 pages will be found implied in the following reply 
 to them. 
 
 Note. 
 
 More weight with me than all this Pelion upon 
 Ossa of imaginary Hierarchies has the single remark 
 of Augustine, there neither are nor can be but three 
 essential differences of Being, viz. the Absolute, the 
 Rational Finite, and the Finite irrational ; i, e. God, 
 Man, and Brute ! Besides, the whole scheme is 
 unscriptural, if not contra-scriptural. Pile up 
 winged Hierarchies on Hierarchies, and out blaze 
 the Cabalists, and Dionysius the Areopagite; yet 
 what a gaudy vapor for a healthful mind is the whole 
 conception (or rather Phantasm) compared with the 
 awful Hope held forth in the Gospel, to be one with 
 God in and through the Mediator Christ, even the 
 living, co-etemal Word and Son of God ! 
 
204 
 
 But through the whole of this eloquent Declama- 
 tion, I find two errors predominate, and both, it 
 appears to me, dangerous errors. First, that the 
 rational and consequently the only true Ideas of the 
 Supreme Being, are incompatible with the spirit of 
 prayer and petitionary pleading taught and exem- 
 plified in the Scriptures. Second, that this being 
 the case, and " supplication with arguments and 
 importunate requests" being irrational and known 
 by the Supplicant to be such, it is nevertheless a 
 duty to pray in this fashion. In other words, it is 
 asserted that the Supreme Being requires of his 
 rational creatures, as the condition of their offering 
 acceptable worship to him, that they should wilfully 
 blind themselves to the light, which he had himself 
 given them, as the contra-distinguishing character 
 of their Humanity, without which they could not 
 pray to him at all ; and that drugging their sense 
 of the truth into a temporary doze, they should make 
 believe, that they knew no better ! As if the God 
 of Truth and Father of all lights resembled an 
 Oriental or African Despot, whose courtiers, even 
 those whom he had himself enriched and placed 
 in the highest rank, are commanded to approach 
 
205 
 
 him only in beggars' rags and with a beggarly 
 whine. 
 
 I on the contrary find "the Scripture model of 
 devotion," the prayers and thanksgiving of the 
 Psalmist, and in the main of our own Church Liturgy, 
 perfectly conformable to the highest and clearest 
 couvictions of my Reason. (I use the word in its most 
 comprehensive sense, 'as comprising both the prac- 
 tical and the intellective, not only as the Light but 
 likewise as the Life which is the Light of Man. 
 John i. 3.) And I do not hesitate to attribute the 
 contrary persuasion principally to the three following 
 oversights. First (and this is the Queen Bee in the 
 Hive of error), the identification of the universal 
 Reason with each man's individual Understanding, 
 subjects not only different but diverse, not only allo- 
 geneous but heterogeneous. Second, the substi- 
 tution of the idea of the Infinite for that of the 
 Absolute. Third and lastly, the habit of using the 
 former as a sort of Superlative Synonime of the vast 
 or indefinitely great. Now the practical difference 
 between my scheme and that of the Essayist, for 
 whose talents and intentions I feel sincere respect, 
 may perhaps be stated thus. 
 
206 
 
 The essayist would bring down his understanding to 
 his Religion : I would raise up my understanding 
 to my reason, and find my Religion in the focus 
 resulting from their convergence. We both alike 
 use the same penitential, deprecative and petitionary 
 prayers ; I in the full assurance of their congruity 
 with my Reason, He in a factitious oblivion of their 
 being the contrary. 
 
 The name of the Author of the Natural History 
 of Enthusiasm is unknown to me and unconjectured. 
 It is evidently the work of a mind at once observant 
 and meditative. And should these notes meet the 
 Author's eye, let him be assured that I willingly 
 give to his genius that respect which his intentions 
 without it would secure for him, in the breast of 
 every good man. But in the present state of things, 
 infidelity having fallen into disrepute, even on the 
 score of intellect, yet the obligation to shew a reason 
 for our faith having become more generally recog- 
 nized, as reading and the taste for serious conversa- 
 tion have increased, there is a large class of my 
 countrymen disposed to receive, with especial favour, 
 any opinions that will enable them to make a com- 
 promise, between their new knowledge and their 
 
207 
 
 old belief. And with these men, the author's evident 
 abilities will probably render the work a high au- 
 thority. Now it is the very purpose of my life to im- 
 press the contrary sentiments. Hence these notes. 
 
 S. T. COLERIDGE. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 (Referred to in page 136.) 
 
 My Dear 
 
 In emptying a drawer of under- 
 stockings, rose-leaf bags, old (but, too many of 
 them) unopened letters, and paper scraps, or brain 
 fritters, I had my attention directed to a sere and 
 ragged half-sheet by a gust of wind, which had 
 separated it from its companions, and whisked it out 
 of the window into the garden. — Not that I went 
 after it. I have too much respect for the numerous 
 tribe, to which it belonged, to lay any restraint on 
 their movements, or to put the Vagrant Act in force 
 against them. But it so chanced that some after- 
 breeze had stuck it on a standard rose-tree, and 
 there I found it, as I was pacing my evening walk 
 alongside the lower ivy-wall, the bristled runners 
 from which threaten to entrap the top branch of the 
 cherry tree in our neighbour's kitchen garden. "X 
 
 v 
 
210 
 
 had been meditating a letter to you, and as I run my 
 eye over this fly-away, tag-rag and bob-tail, and 
 bethought me that it was a bye-blow of my own, I 
 felt a sort of fatherly remorse, and yearning towards 
 
 it, and exclaimed — " If I had a frank for , this 
 
 should help to make up the ounce." It was far too 
 decrepit to travel per se — besides that the seal would 
 have looked like a single pin on a beggar's coat of 
 tatters — and yet one does not like to be stopt in a 
 kind feeling, which, my conscience interpreted as 
 a sort of promise to the said scrap, and therefore, 
 (frank or no frank), I will transcribe it. A dog's ML? 
 .leaf, at the top worn off, which must have contained, 
 I presume, the syllable Ve 
 
 Rily, quoth Demosius of 
 
 Toutoscosmos, Gentleman, to Mystes the Allocos- 
 mite, thou seemest to me like an out-of-door's 
 patient of St. Luke's, wandering about in the rain 
 without cap, hat, or bonnet, poring on the elevation of 
 a palace, not the House that Jack built, but the House 
 that is to be built for Jack, in the suburbs of the 
 City, which his cousin-german, the lynx-eyed Dr. 
 Gruithuisen has lately discovered in the moon. 
 
211 
 
 But for a foolish kindness for that Phyz of thine, 
 which whilome belonged to an old school-fellow of 
 the same name with thep, I would, get thee shipped 
 off under the Alien Act, as a Non Ens, or Pre- 
 existent of the other World to come ! — To whom 
 Mystes retorted — Verily, Friend Demos, thou art 
 too fantastic for a genuine Toutoscosmos man ! and 
 it needs only a fit of dyspepsy, or a cross in love to 
 make an Heterocosmite of thee ; this same Heteros- 
 cosmos being in fact the endless shadow which the 
 Toutoscosmos casts at sun-set ! But not to alarm 
 or affront thee, as if I insinuated that thou wert in 
 danger of becoming an Allocosmite, T let the whole 
 of thy courteous address to me pass without com- 
 ment or objection, save only the two concluding mo- 
 nosyllables and the preposition (Pre) which anticipates 
 them. The world in which I exist is another world 
 indeed, but not to come. It is as present as (if that 
 beat all) the magnetic planet, of which, according to 
 the Astronomer Halley, the visible globe, that we 
 inverminate, is the case or travelling-trunk — a neat 
 little world where light still exists in statu perfuso, 
 as on the third day of the Creation, before it was 
 polarised into outward and inward, i. e- while light 
 p 2 
 
212 
 
 and life were one and the same, neither existing 
 formally, yet both emin enter : and when herb, flower, 
 and forest, rose as a vision, in proprio lucido, the 
 ancestor and unseen yesterday of the sun and 
 moon. Now, whether thei - e really is such an elysian 
 mundus mundulus incased in the Macrocosm, or 
 Great World, below the Adamantine Vault that 
 supports the Mother Waters, that support the coat- 
 ing- crust of that mundus immundus on which we, 
 and others less scantily furnished from nature's 
 Leggery, crawl, delve, and nestle — (or, shall I say 
 
 the LilCeum, oS irepiirarovv bi rofrrov K6crfj.ov ^tXoaocpoL) — the 
 
 said Dr. Halley may, perhaps, by this time, have 
 ascertained : and to him and the philosophic 
 ghosts, his compeers, 1 leave it. But that another 
 world is inshrined in the Microcosm I not only be- 
 lieve, but at certain depths of my Being, during the 
 solemner Sabbaths of the Spirit, I have held com- 
 mune therewith, in the power of that Faith, which is 
 " the substance of the things hoped for," the living 
 stem that will itself expand into the flower, which 
 it now foreshews. How should it not be so, even 
 on grounds of natural reason, and the analogy of 
 inferior life ? Is not nature prophetic up the whole 
 
213 
 
 vast pyramid of organic being ? And in which of 
 her numberless predictions has nature been con- 
 victed of a lie ? Is not every organ announced by a 
 previous instinct or act? The Larva of the Stag- 
 beetle lies in its Chrysalis like an infant in the coffin 
 of an adult, having left an empty space half the 
 length it occupies — and this space is the exact 
 length of the horn which distinguishes the perfect 
 animal, but which, when it constructed its temporary 
 Sarcophagus, was not yet in existence. Do not the 
 eyes, ears, lungs of the unborn babe, give notice and 
 furnish proof of a transuterine, visible, audible 
 atmospheric world ? We have eyes, ears, touch, 
 taste, smell ; and have we not an answering world 
 of shapes, colours, sounds, and sapid and odorous 
 bodies? But likewise — alas for the man for whom 
 the one has not the same evidence of fact as the 
 other — the Creator has given us spiritual senses, 
 and sense-organs — ideas I mean — the idea of the 
 good, the idea of the beautiful, ideas of eternity, 
 immortality, freedom, and of that which contem- 
 plated relatively to WILL is Hoiiness, in relation to 
 LIFE is Bliss. And must not these too infer the 
 existence of a world correspondent to them ? There 
 
214 
 
 is a Light, said the Hebrew Sage, compared with 
 which the Glory of the Sun is but a cloudy veil : 
 and is it an ignis fatuus given to mock us and lead 
 us astray ? And from a yet higher authority we 
 know, that it is a light that lighteth every man that 
 cometh into the world. And are there no objects to 
 reflect it ? Or must we seek its analagon in the 
 light of the glow-worm, that simply serves to dis- 
 tinguish one reptile from all the rest, and lighting, 
 inch by inch, its mazy path through weeds and grass, 
 leaves all else before, and behind, and around it in 
 darkness ? No ! Another and answerable world 
 there is; and if any man discern it not, let him not, 
 whether sincerely or in contemptuous irony, pretend 
 a defect of faculty as the cause. The sense, the 
 light, and the conformed objects are all there and 
 for all men. The difference between man and 
 man in relation thereto, results from no difference in 
 their several gifts and powers of intellect, but in the 
 will. As certainly as the individual is a man, so 
 certainly should this other world be present to him : 
 yea, it is his proper home. But he is an absentee 
 and chooses to live abroad. His freedom and what- 
 ever else he possesses which the dog and the ape do 
 
215 
 
 not possess, yea, the whole revenue of his huma- 
 nity, is derived from this — but with the Irish Land*- 
 owner in the Theatres, Gaming-houses, and Mait- 
 resseries of Paris, so with him. He is a voluntary 
 Absentee ! I repeat it again and again — the cause 
 is altogether in the Will : and the defect of intel- 
 lectual power, and " the having no turn or taste 
 for subjects of this sort," are effects and conse- 
 quences of the alienation of the Will — i. e. of the 
 man himself. There may be a defect, but there 
 was not a deficiency, of the intellect. I appeal to 
 facts for the proof. Take the science of Political 
 Economy — no two Professors understand each other 
 — and often have I been present where the subject 
 has been discussed in a room full of merchants and 
 manufacturers, sensible and well-informed men : and 
 the conversation has ended in a confession, that the 
 matter was beyond their comprehension. And yet the 
 science professes to give light on Rents, Taxes, In- 
 come, Capital, the Principles of Trade, Commerce, 
 Agriculture, on Wealth, and the ways of acquiring 
 and increasing it, in short on all that most passion- 
 ately excites and interests the Toutoscosmos men. 
 But it was avowed, that to arrive at any understand- 
 ing of these matters requires a mind gigantic in its 
 
216 
 
 comprehension, and microscopic in its accuracy of 
 detail. Now compare this with the effect produced 
 on promiscuous crowds by a Whitfield, or a Wesley 
 — or rather compare with it the shaking of every leaf 
 of the vast forest to the first blast of Luther's trum- 
 pet. Was it only of the world to come that Luther 
 and his compeers preached ? Turn to Luther's 
 table talk, and see if the larger part be not of that 
 other world which now is, and without the being 
 and working of which the world to come would be 
 either as unintelligible as Abracadabra, or a mere 
 reflection and elongation of the world of sense — 
 Jack Robinson between two looking-glasses, with a 
 series of Jack Robinsons in secula seculorum. 
 
 Well, but what is this new and yet other world ? 
 The Brain of a man that is out of his senses ? A 
 world fraught " with Castles in the air, well worthy 
 the attention of any gentleman inclined to idealize 
 a large property ? " 
 
 The sneer on that lip, and the arch shine of that eye, 
 Friend Demosius, would almost justify me, though 
 I should answer that question by retorting it in a 
 parody. What, quoth the owlet, peeping out of his 
 ivy-bush at noon, with his blue fringed eye-curtains 
 
217 
 
 dropt, what is this light which is said to exist to- 
 gether with this warmth, we feel, and yet is something 
 else ? But I read likewise in that same face, as thou 
 wert beginning to prepare that question, a sort of 
 mis-giving from within, as if thou wert more positive 
 than sure that the reply, with which you would ac- 
 commodate me, is as wise, as it is witty. Therefore, 
 though I cannot answer your question, I will give you 
 a hint how you may answer it for yourself. — 1st. 
 Learn the art and acquire the habit of contemplating 
 things abstractedly from their relations. I will ex- 
 plain myself by an instance. Suppose a body float- 
 ing at a certain height in the air, and receiving the 
 light so equally on all sides as not to occasion the 
 eye to conjecture any solid contents. And now let 
 six or seven persons see it at different distances and 
 from different points of view. For A it will be a 
 square! for B a triangle; for C. two right-angled 
 triangles attached to each other; for D two un- 
 equal triangles ; for E it will be a triangle with a 
 Trapezium hung on to it ; for F it will be a square 
 with a cross in it \f ; for G it will be an oblong- 
 quadrangle with three triangles in it P\Vj ; and 
 for H three unequal triangles. 
 
 Now it is evident that neither of all these is the 
 
218 ■ 
 
 figure itself, (which in this instance is a four-sided 
 pyramid), but the contingent relations of the figure. 
 Now transfer this from Geometry to the subjects of 
 the real (i. e. not merely formal or abstract) sciences 
 - — to substances and bodies, the materia subjecta of 
 the Chemist, Physiologist and Naturalist, and you 
 will gradually (that is, if you choose and sincerely 
 will it) acquire the power and the disposition of con- 
 templating your own imaginations, wants, appetites, 
 passions, opinions, &c, on the same principles, and 
 distinguish that, which alone is and abides, from the 
 accidental and impermanent relations arising out of 
 its co-existence with other things or beings. 
 
 My second rule or maxim requires its prolegemena. 
 In the several classes and orders that mark the scale 
 of organic nature, from the plant to the highest order 
 of animals, each higher implies a lower, as the con- 
 dition of its actual existence — and the same position 
 holds good equally of the vital and organic powers. 
 Thus, without the first power, that of growth, or what 
 Bichat and others name the vegetive life, or pro- 
 ductivity, the second power, that of total and loco- 
 motion (commonly but most infelicitously called 
 irritability), could not exist — i. e. manifest its being. 
 
219 
 
 Productivity is the necessary antecedent of irritabi- 
 lity, and in like manner, irritability of sensibility. 
 But it is no less true, that in the idea of each power 
 the lower derives its intelligibility from the higher : 
 and the highest must be presumed to inhere latently 
 or potentially in the lowest, or this latter will be 
 wholly unintelligible, inconceivable — you can have 
 no conception of it. Thus in sensibility we see a 
 power that in every instant goes out of itself, and in 
 the same instant retracts and falls back on itself: 
 which the great fountains of pure Mathesis, the 
 Pythagorean and Platonic Geometricians, illustrated 
 in the production, or self-evolution, of the point into 
 the circle. Imagine the going-forth and the re- 
 traction as two successive acts, the result would be 
 an infinity of angles, a growth of zig-zag. In order 
 to the imaginability of a circular line, the extrbitive 
 and the retroitive must co-exist in one and the same 
 act and moment, the curve line being the product. 
 Now what is ideally true in the generations or pro- 
 ductive acts of the intuitive faculty (of the pure 
 sense, I mean, or Inward Vision — the reine Anschau- 
 ung of the German Philosophers) must be assumed as 
 truth of fact in all living growth, or wherein would the 
 
220 
 
 growth of a plant differ from a chrystal ? The latter 
 is formed wholly by apposition ab extra : in the 
 former the movement ab extra is, in order of thought, 
 consequent on, and yet eoinstaneous with, the 
 movement ab intra. Thus, the specific character of 
 Sensibility, the highest of the three powers, is found 
 to be the general character of Life, and supplies the 
 only way of conceiving, supplies the only insight 
 into the possibility of, the first and lowest power. 
 And yet even thus, growth taken as separate from 
 and exclusive of sensibility, would be unintelligible, 
 nay, contradictory. For it would be an act of the 
 life, or productive form (vide Aids to Reflection, 
 p. 68.) of the plant, having the life itself as its 
 source, (since it is a going forth from the life), and 
 likewise having the life itself as its object, for in 
 the same instant it is retracted : and yet the product 
 (i. e. the plant) exists not for itself, by the hypo- 
 thesis that has excluded sensibility. For all sen- 
 sibility is a self-finding ; whence the German word 
 for sensation or feeling is Empfindung, i. e. an inward 
 finding. Therefore sensibility cannot be excluded : 
 and as it does not exist actually, it must be involved 
 potentially . Life does not yet manifest itself in its 
 
221 
 
 highest dignity, as a se\f-Jinding ; but in an evident 
 tendency thereto, or a self-seeking — and this has 
 two epochs, or intensities. Potential sensibility in 
 its first epoch, or lowest intensity, appears as growth : 
 in its second epoch, it shews itself as irritability, or 
 vital instinct. In both, however, the sensibility 
 must have pre-existed, (or rather pre-inhered) 
 though as latent : or how could the irritability 
 have been evolved out of the growth ? (ex. gr. in the 
 stamina of the plant during the act of impregnating 
 the germen). Or the sensibility out of the irritabi- 
 lity? (ex. gr. in the first appearance of nerves and 
 nervous bulbs, in the lower orders of the insect 
 realm.) But, indeed, evolution as contra-distin- 
 guished from apposition, or superinduction ab aliunde, 
 is implied in the conception of life: and is that 
 which essentially differences a living fibre from a 
 thread of Asbestos, the Floscule or any other of the 
 moving fairy shapes of animalcular life from the 
 frost-plumes on a window pane. 
 
 Again : what has been said of the lowest power 
 of life relatively to its highest power — growth to 
 sensibility, the plant to the animal — applies equally 
 to life itself relatively to mind. Without the latter 
 
222 
 
 the former would be unintelligible, and the idea 
 would contradict itself. If there had been no self- 
 retaining power, a self-finding would be a per- 
 petual self-losing. Divide a second into a thou- 
 sand, or if you please, a million of parts, yet if 
 there be an absolute chasm separating one moment 
 of self-finding from another, the chasm of a mil- 
 lionth of a second would be equal to all time. A 
 being that existed for itself only in moments, each 
 infinitely small and yet absolutely divided from the 
 preceding and following, would not exist for itself 
 at all. And if all beings were the same, or yet 
 lower, it could not be said to exist in any sense, 
 any more than light would exist as light, if there 
 were no eyes or visual power : and the whole concep- 
 tion would break up into contradictory positions — 
 an intestine conflict more destructive than even that 
 between the two cats, where one tail alone is said 
 to have survived the battle. The conflicting factors 
 of our conception would eat each other up, tails and 
 all. Ergo : the mind, as a self-retaining power, is 
 no less indispensable to the intelligibility of life as a 
 self-finding power, than a self-finding power, i. e. sen- 
 sibility, to a self-seeking power, i. e. growth. Again : 
 
223 
 
 a self-retaining mind — (?. e. memory, which is the 
 primary sense of mind, and the common people in 
 several of our provinces still use the word in this 
 sense) — a self-retaining power supposes a self-cow- 
 taining power, a self-conscious being. And this is 
 the definition of mind in its proper and distinctive 
 sense, a subject that is its own object — or where A 
 contevaplant is one and the same subject with A 
 contemplated. Lastly (that I may complete the 
 ascent of powers for my own satisfaction, and not as 
 expecting, or in the present habit of your thoughts 
 even wishing you to follow me to a height, dizzy for 
 the strongest spirit, it being the apex of all human, 
 perhaps of angelic knowledge to know, that it must 
 be : since absolute ultimates can only be seen by a 
 light thrown backward from the Penultimate. — 
 John's Gosp. i. 18.) Lastly, I say, the self-contain- 
 ing power supposes a self-causing power. Causa sui 
 atria vrrepovcrios. Here alone we find a problem which 
 in its very statement contains its own solution — the 
 one self-solving power, beyond which no question 
 is possible. Yet short of this we dare not rest : for 
 even the 'o rfN, the Supreme Being, if it were con- 
 templated abstractly from the Absolute will, whose 
 
 ■ 
 
224 • 
 
 essence it is to be causative of all Being, would 
 sink into a Spinozistic Deity. That this is not 
 evident to us arises from the false notion, of Reason 
 (o Aoyos) as a quality, property, or faculty of the 
 Real : whereas reason is the supreme reality, the only 
 true being in all things visible and invisible! the 
 Pleroma, in whom alone God loveth the world ! 
 Even in man will is deeper than mind : for mind 
 does not cease to be mind by having an antecedent ; 
 but Will is either the first (to aei irpoirpwrov, to nun- 
 quam positum, semper swpponendum) or it is not 
 will at all. 
 
 And now, friend ! for the practical rules which I 
 promised, or the means by which you may educate 
 in yourself that state of mind which is most favour- 
 able to a true knowledge of both the worlds that 
 now are, and to a right faith in the world to come. 
 
 I. Remember, that whatever is, lives. A thing 
 absolutely lifeless is inconceivable, except as a 
 thought, image, or fancy, in some other being. 
 
 II. In every living form, the conditions of its 
 existence are to be sought for in that which is below 
 it ; the grounds of its intelligibility in that which is 
 above it. 
 
225 
 
 III. Accustom your mind to distinguish the rela- 
 tions of things from the things themselves. Think 
 often of the latter, independent of the former, in order 
 that you may never think of the former apart from 
 the latter, i. e. mistake mere relations for true and 
 enduring realities : and with regard to these, seek the 
 solution of each in some higher reality* The con- 
 trary process leads demonstrably to Atheism, and 
 though you may not get quite so far, it is not well 
 to be seen travelling on the road with your face 
 towards it. 
 
 I might add a fourth rule : Learn to distinguish 
 permanent from accidental relations. But I am 
 willing that you should for a time take permanent 
 relations as real things — confident that you will 
 soon feel the necessity of reducing what you now 
 call things into relations, which immediately arising 
 out of a somewhat else may properly be contem- 
 plated as the products of that somewhat else, and as 
 the means by which its existence is made known 
 to you. But known as what ? not as a product : 
 for it is the somewhat else, to which the product 
 stands in the same relation as the words, you are 
 now hearing, bear to my living soul. But if not as 
 
 Q 
 
226 
 
 products, then as productive powers : and the result 
 will be, that what you have hitherto called things 
 will be regarded as only more or less permanent 
 relations of things, having their derivative reality 
 greater or less in proportion as they are regular or 
 accidental relations ; determined by the pre-estab- 
 lished fitness of the true thing to the organ and 
 faculty of the percipient, or resulting from some 
 defect or anomaly in the latter. 
 
 With, these convictions matured into a habit of 
 mind, the man no longer seeks, or believes himself 
 to find, true reality except in the powers of nature ; 
 which living and actuating Powers are made known 
 to him, and their kinds determined, and their forces 
 measured, by their proper products. In other words, 
 he thinks of the products in reference to the produc- 
 tive powers, the dvrus xmipxovaiv ApiOpois r) Awafieai, ws Tots 
 wJj"' irpofia.Qesa.Tais apxats rod irdfTos ovpdvov na) yr)s, Ol trie feamian 
 
 sage : and thus gives to the former (to the products, 
 I mean) a true reality, a life, a beauty, and a phy- 
 siognomic expression. For him they are the eiiea 
 
 <i faQ ZflONTA, r) 6/j.iXia icoi 7] oia.XeK.Tos ©ots np6s Avdpwirovs. lhe 
 
 Allokosmite, therefore (though he does not bark at 
 the image in the glass, because he knows what it 
 
■ 227 
 
 is), possesses the same world with the .Toutos- 
 cosmites ; and has, besides, in present possession 
 another and better world, to which he can transport 
 himself by a swifter vehicle than Fortunatus's Wish- 
 ing Cap. 
 
 Finally, what is Reason ? You have often asked 
 me ; and this is my answer : — 
 
 "Whene'er the mist, that stands 'twixt God and thee 
 Defecates to a pure transparency, 
 That intercepts no light and adds no stain — 
 There Reason is, and then begins her reign ! " 
 
 But, alas ! 
 
 " tu stesso ti fai grosso 
 
 Col falso immaginar, si che non vedi 
 Cio che vedresti, se l'avessi scosso." 
 
 Dante, Paradiso, Canto I. 
 
 FINIS. 
 
 BRADBURY AND DENT, PRINTERS, OXFORD ARMS PASSAGE. 
 
*f 
 
 ."•'